That I should execute the task without
the knowledge of my wife would not have been possible, for till the very
last she watched over my every act, and, as I verily believe, divined
the most of my thoughts.
And so we grew old together, peacefully, and side by side, speaking
seldom of that great gap in my life when we were lost to each other and
of all that then befell. At length the end came. My wife died suddenly
in her sleep in the eighty-seventh year of her age. I buried her on the
south side of the church here, with sorrow indeed, but not with sorrow
inconsolable, for I know that I must soon rejoin her, and those others
whom I have loved.
There in that wide heaven are my mother and my sister and my sons;
there are great Guatemoc my friend, last of the emperors, and many other
companions in war who have preceded me to peace; there, too, though she
doubted of it, is Otomie the beautiful and proud. In the heaven which
I trust to reach, all the sins of my youth and the errors of my age
notwithstanding, it is told us there is no marrying and giving in
marriage; and this is well, for I do not know how my wives, Montezuma's
daughter and the sweet English gentlewoman, would agree together were it
otherwise.
And now to my task.
CHAPTER II
OF THE PARENTAGE OF THOMAS WINGFIELD
I, Thomas Wingfield, was born here at Ditchingham, and in this very room
where I write to-day.
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