She could not afford to recognize Mary's claim, for that would have been to alienate the Protestants, double the number of Catholics, and, in her own phrase, to spread a winding-sheet before her eyes; for all would have turned to the rising sun.
During the long absence of her husband after the fall of Troy many chieftains of Ithaca and the islands round about became her suitors; and, to rid herself of the importunities of the wooers, she bade them wait till she had woven a winding-sheet for old Laertes, the father of Odysseus.
He now stood for his statue to the sculptor, Nicholas Stone, standing before a fire in his study at the Deanery, with his winding-sheet wrapped and tied round him, his eyes shut, and his feet resting on a funeral urn.
