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She knew that the stars were set in spheres, crystal spheres girdling the earth, and that these spheres made music, singing together a song so sweet and loud that it is silence. Her mind made play that this music creeping to her from the darkness was the music of the spheres, tinkling and singing eternally, the music of the stars in their solemn, far-off houses. But every now and then her heart would remember Kit Oxenbrigge's hands upon the lute, and his sleek head bent towards it; she would think of putting out her hand to stroke that head. . . . Such thoughts had nothing to do with the music of the spheres, and soon her mind fell back to earth.

Why must she have a different lot from the lot of the women round her, who married and bore children? In spite of her wildness, of her boyish looks and ways, she wanted to be married. Not only was she the child of a day which knew the spinster only as a monstrosity—an unreckoned and sinister fruit of the Dissolution—but she wanted love and the fulfilment of her body in childbearing. Already, at twenty-eight and hale as a lad, she seemed to feel the life in her wither as she watched girls ten years younger than herself suckle and lead their children. Once or twice she had been asked in marriage by men she barely knew, but that had been years ago, before her need was great. Then she had refused to take a Protestant, and now it seemed that no Protestant would take her. Of late years no one had even approached her, in spite of the money that would go with her; she knew that Oxenbrigge had been her parents' last hope. . . .