At length I put the question.
Jael "thought he had--but wasn't sure.

Didn't bother her head about such folk." "If he asked again, might he come up-stairs ?" "No." I was too weak to combat, and Jael was too strong an adversary; so I lay for days and days in my sick room, often thinking, but never speaking, about the lad.

Never once asking for him to come to me; not though it would have been life to me to see his merry face--I longed after him so.
At last I broke the bonds of sickness--which Jael always riveted as long and as tightly as she could--and plunged into the outer world again.
It was one market-day--Jael being absent--that I came down-stairs.

A soft, bright, autumn morning, mild as spring, coaxing a wandering robin to come and sing to me, loud as a quire of birds, out of the thinned trees of the Abbey yard.

I opened the window to hear him, though all the while in mortal fear of Jael.