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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Forgotten Hero, by Emily Sarah Holt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Forgotten Hero
+       Not for Him
+
+Author: Emily Sarah Holt
+
+Illustrator: H. Petherick
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23119]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FORGOTTEN HERO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+A Forgotten Hero, or, Not for Him, by Emily Sarah Holt.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+This shortish book takes us to the end of the thirteenth century, and,
+although the people in the book are mostly high-born, the scene is a
+very domestic one.  It gives us a good understanding of the way life was
+lived in those days.  Recommended for its social interest.
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+A FORGOTTEN HERO, OR, NOT FOR HIM, BY EMILY SARAH HOLT.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+CASTLES IN THE AIR.
+
+  "O pale, pale face, so sweet and meek, Oriana!"
+
+  Tennyson.
+
+"Is the linen all put away, Clarice?"
+
+"Ay, Dame."
+
+"And the rosemary not forgotten?"
+
+"I have laid it in the linen, Dame."
+
+"And thy day's task of spinning is done?"
+
+"All done, Dame."
+
+"Good.  Then fetch thy sewing and come hither, and I will tell thee
+somewhat touching the lady whom thou art to serve."
+
+"I humbly thank your Honour."  And dropping a low courtesy, the girl
+left the room, and returned in a minute with her work.
+
+"Thou mayest sit down, Clarice."
+
+Clarice, with another courtesy and a murmur of thanks, took her seat in
+the recess of the window, where her mother was already sitting.  For
+these two were mother and daughter; a middle-aged, comfortable-looking
+mother, with a mixture of firmness and good-nature in her face; and a
+daughter of some sixteen years, rather pale and slender, but active and
+intelligent in her appearance.  Clarice's dark hair was smoothly brushed
+and turned up in a curl all round her head, being cut sufficiently short
+for that purpose.  Her dress was long and loose, made in what we call
+the Princess style, with a long train, which she tucked under one arm
+when she walked.  The upper sleeve was of a narrow bell shape, but under
+it came down tight ones to the wrist, fastened by a row of large round
+buttons quite up to the elbow.  A large apron--which Clarice called a
+barm-cloth--protected the dress from stain.  A fillet of ribbon was
+bound round her head, but she had no ornaments of any kind.  Her mother
+wore a similar costume, excepting that in her case the fillet round the
+head was exchanged for a wimple, which was a close hood, covering head
+and neck, and leaving no part exposed but the face.  It was a very
+comfortable article in cold weather, but an eminently unbecoming one.
+
+These two ladies were the wife and daughter of Sir Gilbert Le Theyn, a
+knight of Surrey, who held his manor of the Earl of Cornwall; and the
+date of the day when they thus sat in the window was the 26th of March
+1290.
+
+It will strike modern readers as odd if I say that Clarice and her
+mother knew very little of each other.  She was her father's heir, being
+an only child; and it was, therefore, considered the more necessary that
+she should not live at home.  It was usual at that time to send all
+young girls of good family, not to school--there were no schools in
+those days--but to be brought up under some lady of rank, where they
+might receive a suitable education, and, on reaching the proper age,
+have a husband provided for them, the one being just as much a matter of
+course as the other.  The consent of the parents was asked to the
+matrimonial selection of the mistress, but public opinion required some
+very strong reason to justify them in withholding it.  The only
+exception to this arrangement was when girls were destined for the
+cloister, and in that case they received their education in a convent.
+But there was one person who had absolutely no voice in the matter, and
+that was the unfortunate girl in question.  The very idea of consulting
+her on any point of it, would have struck a mediaeval mother with
+astonishment and dismay.
+
+Why ladies should have been considered competent in all instances to
+educate anybody's daughters but their own is a mystery of the Middle
+Ages.  Dame La Theyn had under her care three girls, who were receiving
+their education at her hands, and she never thought of questioning her
+own competency to impart it; yet, also without a question, she sent
+Clarice away from her, first to a neighbouring knight's wife, and now to
+a Princess, to receive the education which she might just as well have
+had at home.  It was the command of Fashion; and who does not know that
+Fashion, whether in the thirteenth century or the nineteenth, _must_ be
+obeyed?
+
+Clarice was on the brink of high promotion.  By means of a ladder of
+several steps--a Dame requesting a Baroness, and the Baroness entreating
+a Countess--the royal lady had been reached at last, whose husband was
+the suzerain of Sir Gilbert.  It made little difference to this lady
+whether her bower-women were two or ten, provided that the attendance
+given her was as much as she required; and she readily granted the
+petition that Clarice La Theyn might be numbered among those young
+ladies.  The Earl of Cornwall was the richest man in England, not
+excepting the King.  It may be added that, at this period, Earl was the
+highest title known short of the Prince of Wales.  The first Duke had
+not yet been created, while Marquis is a rank of much later date.
+
+Dame La Theyn, though she had some good points, had also one grand
+failing.  She was an inveterate gossip.  And it made no difference to
+her who was her listener, provided a listener could be had.  A spicy
+dish of scandal was her highest delight.  She had not the least wish nor
+intention of doing harm to the person whom she thus discussed.  She had
+not even the slightest notion that she did any.  But her bower-maidens
+knew perfectly well that, if one of them wanted to put the dame in high
+good-humour before extracting a favour, the best way to do so was to
+inform her that Mrs Sheppey had had words with her goodman, or that
+Dame Rouse considered Joan Stick i' th' Lane [Note 1], no better than
+she should be.
+
+An innocent request from Clarice, that she might know something about
+her future mistress, had been to Dame La Theyn a delightful opportunity
+for a good dish of gossip.  Reticence was not in the Dame's nature; and
+in the thirteenth century--and much later than that--facts which in the
+nineteenth would be left in concealment, or, at most, only delicately
+hinted at, were spoken out in the plainest English, even to young girls.
+The fancy that the Countess of Cornwall might not like her whole life,
+so far as it was known, laid bare to her new bower-woman was one which
+never troubled the mind of Dame La Theyn.  Privacy, to any person of
+rank more especially, was an unknown thing in the Middle Ages.
+
+"Thou must know, Clarice," began the Dame, "that of old time, before
+thou wert born, I was bower-maiden unto my most dear-worthy Lady of
+Lincoln--that is brother's wife to my gracious Lady of Gloucester,
+mother unto my Lady of Cornwall, that shall be thy mistress.  The Lady
+of Lincoln, that was mine, is a dame of most high degree, for her father
+was my Lord of Saluces, [Note 2], in Italy--very nigh a king--and she
+herself was wont to be called `Queen of Lincoln,' being of so high
+degree.  Ah, she gave me many a good gown, for I was twelve years in her
+service.  And a good woman she is, but rarely proud--as it is but like
+such a princess should be.  I mind one super-tunic she gave me, but half
+worn,"--this was said impressively, for a garment only _half worn_ was
+considered a fit gift from one peeress to another--"of blue damask, all
+set with silver buttons, and broidered with ladies' heads along the
+border.  I gave it for a wedding gift unto Dame Rouse when she was wed,
+and she hath it now, I warrant thee.  Well! her lord's sister, our Lady
+Maud, was wed to my Lord of Gloucester; but stay!--there is a tale to
+tell thee thereabout."
+
+And Dame La Theyn bit off her thread with a complacent face.  Nothing
+suited her better than a tale to tell, unless it were one to hear.
+
+"Well-a-day, there be queer things in this world!"
+
+The Dame paused, as if to give time for Clarice to note that very
+original sentiment.
+
+"Our Lady Maud was wed to her lord, the good Earl of Gloucester, with
+but little liking of her side, and yet less on his.  Nathless, she made
+no plaint, but submitted herself, as a good maid should do--for mark
+thou, Clarice, 'tis the greatest shame that can come to a maiden to set
+her will against those of her father and mother in wedlock.  A good
+maid--as I trust thou art--should have no will in such matters but that
+of those whom God hath set over her.  And all love-matches end ill,
+Clarice; take my word for it!  Art noting me?"
+
+Clarice meekly responded that the moral lesson had reached her.  She did
+not add whether she meant to profit by it.  Probably she had her own
+ideas on the question, and it is quite possible that they did not
+entirely correspond with those which her mother was instilling.
+
+"Now look on me, Clarice," pursued Dame La Theyn, earnestly.  "When I
+was a young maid I had foolish fancies like other maidens.  Had I been
+left to order mine own life, I warrant thee I should have wed with one
+Master Pride, that was page to my good knight my father; and when I wist
+that my said father had other thoughts for my disposal, I slept of a wet
+pillow for many a night--ay, that did I.  But now that I be come to
+years of discretion, I do ensure thee that I am right thankful my said
+father was wiser than I.  For this Master Pride was slain at Evesham,
+when I was of the age of five-and-twenty years, and left behind him not
+so much as a mark of silver that should have come to me, his widow.  It
+was a good twenty-fold better that I should have wedded with thy father,
+Sir Gilbert, that hath this good house, and forty acres of land, and
+spendeth thirty marks by the year and more.  Dost thou not see the
+same?"
+
+No.  Clarice heard, but she did not see.
+
+"Well-a-day!  Now know, that when my good Lord of Gloucester, that wed
+with our Lady Maud, was a young lad, being then in wardship unto Sir
+Hubert, sometime Earl of Kent (whom God pardon!) he strake up a
+love-match with the Lady Margaret, that was my said Lord of Kent his
+daughter.  And in very deed a good match it should have been, had it
+been well liked of them that were above them; but the Lord King that
+then was--the father unto King Edward that now is--rarely misliked the
+same, and gat them divorced in all hate.  It was not meet, as thou
+mayest well guess, that such matters should be settled apart from his
+royal pleasure.  And forthwith, ere further mischief could ensue, he
+caused my said Lord of Gloucester to wed with our Lady Maud.  But look
+thou, so obstinate was he, and so set of having his own way, that he
+scarce ever said so much as `Good morrow' to the Lady Maud until he knew
+that the said Lady Margaret was commanded to God.  Never do thou be
+obstinate, Clarice.  'Tis ill enough for a young man, but yet worse for
+a maid."
+
+"How long time was that, Dame, an' it like you?"
+
+"Far too long," answered Dame La Theyn, somewhat severely.  "Three years
+and more."
+
+Three years and more!  Clarice's thoughts went off on a long journey.
+Three years of disappointed hope and passionate regret, three years of
+weary waiting for death, on the part of the Lady Margaret!  Naturally
+enough her sympathies were with the girl.  And three years, to Clarice,
+at sixteen, seemed a small lifetime.
+
+"Now, this lady whom thou shalt serve, Clarice," pursued her mother--and
+Clarice's mind came back to the subject in hand--"she is first-born
+daughter unto the said Sir Richard de Clare, Lord of Gloucester, and our
+Lady Maud, of whom I spake.  Her name is Margaret, after the damsel that
+died--a poor compliment, as methinks, to the said Lady Maud; and had I
+been she, the maid should have been called aught else it liked my baron,
+but not that."
+
+Ah, but had I been he, thought Clarice, it should have been just that!
+
+"And I have heard," said the Dame, biting off her thread, "that there
+should of old time be some misliking--what I know not--betwixt the Lady
+Margaret and her baron; but whether it were some olden love of his part
+or of hers, or what so, I cast no doubt that she hath long ere this
+overlived the same, and is now a good and loving lady unto him, as is
+meet."
+
+Clarice felt disposed to cast very much doubt on this suggestion.  She
+held the old-fashioned idea that a true heart could love but once, and
+could not forget.  Her vivid imagination instantly erected an exquisite
+castle in the air, wherein the chief part was played by the Lady
+Margaret's youthful lover--a highly imaginary individual, of the most
+perfect manners and unparalleled beauty, whom the unfortunate maiden
+could never forget, though she was forced by her cruel parents to marry
+the Earl of Cornwall.  He, of course, was a monster of ugliness in
+person, and of everything disagreeable in character, as a man in such
+circumstances was bound to be.
+
+Poor Clarice! she had not seen much of the world.  Her mental picture of
+the lady whom she was to serve depicted her as sweet and sorrowful, with
+a low plaintive voice and dark, starry, pathetic eyes, towards whom the
+only feelings possible would be loving reverence and sympathy.
+
+"And now, Clarice, I have another thing to say."
+
+"At your pleasure, Dame."
+
+"I think it but meet to tell thee a thing I have heard from thy father--
+that the Lord Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, thy lady's baron, is one that
+hath some queer ideas in his head.  I know not well what kind they are;
+but folk say that he is a strange man and hath strange talk.  So do thou
+mind what thou dost.  Alway be reverent to him, as is meet; but suffer
+him not to talk to thee but in presence of thy lady."
+
+Clarice felt rather frightened--all the more so from the extreme
+vagueness of the warning.
+
+"And now lap up thy sewing, child, for I see thy father coming in, and
+we will go down to hall."
+
+A few weeks later three horses stood ready saddled at the door of Sir
+Gilbert's house.  One was laden with luggage; the second was mounted by
+a manservant; and the third, provided with saddle and pillion, was for
+Clarice and her father.  Sir Gilbert, fully armed, mounted his steed,
+Clarice was helped up behind him, and with a final farewell to Dame La
+Theyn, who stood in the doorway, they rode forth on their way to Oakham
+Castle.  Three days' journey brought them to their destination, and they
+were witnesses of a curious ceremony just as they reached the Castle
+gate.  All over the gate horseshoes were nailed.  A train of visitors
+were arriving at the Castle, and the trumpeter sounded his horn for
+entrance.
+
+"Who goes there?" demanded the warder.  "The right noble and puissant
+Prince Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, Leicester, and Derby; and his most
+noble lady, Blanche, Queen Dowager of Navarre, Countess of the same,
+cousins unto my gracious Lord of Cornwall."
+
+"Is this my said noble Lord's first visit unto the lordship of Oakham?"
+asked the warder, without opening the gate.  "It is."
+
+"Then our gracious Lord, as Lord of the said manor, demands of him one
+of the shoes of the horse whereon he rides as tribute due from every
+peer of the realm on his first coming to this lordship."
+
+"My right noble and puissant Lord," returned the trumpeter, "denies the
+said shoe of his horse; but offers in the stead one silver penny, for
+the purchase of a shoe in lieu thereof."
+
+"My gracious Lord deigns to receive the said silver penny in lieu of the
+shoe, and lovingly prays your Lord and Lady to enter his said Castle."
+
+Then the portcullis was drawn up, and the long train filed noisily into
+the courtyard.  This ceremony was observed on the first visit of every
+peer to Oakham Castle; but the visitor was allowed, if he chose, as in
+this instance, to redeem the horse-shoe by the payment of money to buy
+one.  The shoes contributed by eminent persons were not unfrequently
+gilded.
+
+The modest train of Sir Gilbert and Clarice crept quietly in at the end
+of the royal suite.  As he was only a knight, his horse-shoe was not in
+request Sir Gilbert told the warder in a few words his name and errand,
+whereupon that functionary summoned a boy, and desired him to conduct
+the knight and maiden to Mistress Underdone.  Having alighted from the
+horse, Clarice shook down her riding-gown, and humbly followed Sir
+Gilbert and the guide into the great hall, which was built like a
+church, with centre and aisles, up a spiral staircase at one end of it,
+and into a small room hung with green say [Note 3].  Here they had to
+wait a while, for every one was too busily employed in the reception of
+the royal guests to pay attention to such comparatively mean people.  At
+last--when Sir Gilbert had yawned a dozen times, and strummed upon the
+table about as many, a door at the back of the room was opened, and a
+portly, comfortable-looking woman came forward to meet them.  Was this
+the Countess? thought Clarice, with her heart fluttering.  It was
+extremely unlike her ideal picture.
+
+"Your servant, Sir Gilbert Le Theyn," said the newcomer, in a cheerful,
+kindly voice.  "I am Agatha Underdone, Mistress of the Maids unto my
+gracious Lady of Cornwall.  I bid thee welcome, Clarice--I think that is
+thy name?"
+
+Clarice acknowledged her name, with a private comforting conviction that
+Mistress Underdone, at least, would be pleasant enough to live with.
+
+"You will wish, without doubt, to go down to hall, where is good company
+at this present," pursued the latter, addressing Sir Gilbert.  "So, if
+it please you to take leave of the maiden--"
+
+Sir Gilbert put two fingers on Clarice's head, as she immediately knelt
+before him.  For a father to kiss a daughter was a rare thing at that
+time, and for the daughter to offer it would have been thought quite
+disrespectful, and much too familiar.
+
+"Farewell, Clarice," said he.  "Be a good maid, be obedient and meek;
+please thy lady; and may God keep thee, and send thee an husband in good
+time."
+
+There was nothing more necessary in Sir Gilbert's eyes.  Obedience was
+the one virtue for Clarice to cultivate, and a husband (quality
+immaterial) was sufficient reward for any amount of virtue.
+
+Clarice saw her father depart without any feeling of regret.  He was
+even a greater stranger to her than her mother.  She was a
+self-contained, lonely-hearted girl, capable of intense love and
+hero-worship, but never having come across one human being who had
+attracted those qualities from their nest in her heart.
+
+"Now follow me, Clarice," said Mistress Underdone, "and I will introduce
+thee to the maidens, thy fellows, of whom there are four beside thee at
+this time."
+
+Clarice followed, silently, up a further spiral staircase, and into a
+larger chamber, where four girls were sitting at work.
+
+"Maidens," said Mistress Underdone, "this is your new fellow, Clarice La
+Theyn, daughter of Sir Gilbert Le Theyn and Dame Maisenta La Heron.
+Stand, each in turn, while I tell her your names."
+
+The nearest of the four, a slight, delicate-looking, fair-haired girl,
+rose at once, gathering her work on her arm.
+
+"Olympias Trusbut, youngest daughter of Sir Robert Trusbut, of the
+county of Lincoln, and Dame Joan Twentymark," announced Mistress
+Underdone.
+
+She turned to the next, a short, dark, merry-looking damsel.
+
+"Elaine Criketot, daughter of Sir William Criketot and Dame Alice La
+Gerunell, of the county of Chester."
+
+The third was tall, stately, and sedate.
+
+"Diana Quappelad, daughter of Sir Walter Quappelad and Dame Beatrice
+Cotele, of the county of Rutland."
+
+Lastly rose a quiet, gentle-looking girl.
+
+"Roisia de Levinton, daughter of Sir Hubert de Levinton and Dame Maud
+Ingham, of the county of Surrey."
+
+Clarice's heart went faintly out to the girl from her own county, but
+she was much too shy to utter a word.
+
+Having introduced the girls to each other, Mistress Underdone left them
+to get acquainted at their leisure.
+
+"Art thou only just come?" asked Elaine, who was the first to speak.
+
+"Only just come," repeated Clarice, timidly.
+
+"Hast thou seen my Lady?"
+
+"Not yet: I should like to see her."
+
+Elaine's answer was a little half-suppressed laugh, which seemed the
+concentration of amusement.
+
+"Maids, hear you this?  Our new fellow has not seen the Lady.  She would
+like to see her."
+
+A smile was reflected on all four faces.  Clarice thought Diana's was
+slightly satirical; those of the other two were rather pitying.
+
+"Now, what dost thou expect her to be like?" pursued Elaine.
+
+"I may be quite wrong," answered Clarice, in the shy way which she was
+not one to lose quickly.  "I fancied she would be tall--"
+
+"Right there," said Olympias.
+
+"And dark--"
+
+"Oh, no, she is fair."
+
+"And very beautiful, with sorrowful eyes, and a low, mournful voice."
+
+All the girls laughed, Roisia and Olympias gently, Diana scornfully,
+Elaine with shrill hilarity.
+
+"_Ha, jolife_!" cried the last-named young lady.  "Heard one ever the
+like?  Only wait till supper.  Then thou shalt see this lovely lady,
+with the sweet, sorrowful eyes and the soft, low voice.  _Pure foy_!  I
+shall die with laughing, Clarice, if thou sayest anything more."
+
+"Hush!" said Diana, sharply and suddenly; but Elaine's amusement had too
+much impetus on it to be stopped all at once.  She was sitting with her
+back to the door, her mirthful laughter ringing through the room, when
+the door was suddenly flung open, and two ladies appeared behind it.
+The startled, terrified expression on the faces of Olympias and Roisia
+warned Clarice that something unpleasant was going to happen.  Had
+Mistress Underdone a superior, between her and the Countess, whom to
+offend was a very grave affair?  Clarice looked round with much interest
+and some trepidation at the new comers.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  Stykelane and Bakepuce--both most unpleasantly suggestive
+names--occur on the Fines Roll for 1254.
+
+Note 2.  Saluzzo.
+
+Note 3.  A common coarse silk, used both for dress and upholstery.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+THE MISTS CLEAR AWAY.
+
+  "Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te."
+
+  Martial.
+
+One at least of the ladies who had disturbed Elaine's hilarity did not
+look a person of whom it was necessary to be afraid.  She was a matronly
+woman of middle age, bearing the remains of extreme beauty.  She had a
+good-natured expression, and she rather shrank back, as if she were
+there on sufferance only.  But the other, who came forward into the
+room, was tall, spare, upright, and angular, with a face which struck
+Clarice as looking very like verjuice.
+
+"Agatha!" called the latter, sharply; and, laying her hand, not gently,
+on Elaine's shoulder, she gave her a shake which rapidly reduced her to
+gravity.
+
+"Ye weary, wretched giglots, what do ye thus laughing and tittering,
+when I have distinctly forbidden the same?--Agatha!--Know ye not that
+all ye be miserable sinners, and this lower world a vale of tears?--
+Agatha!"
+
+"Truly, Cousin Meg," observed the other lady, now coming forward,
+"methinks you go far to make it such."
+
+"Agatha might have more sense," returned her acetous companion.  "I have
+bidden her forty times o'er to have these maids well ordered, and mine
+house as like to an holy convent as might be compassed; and here is she
+none knows whither--taking her pleasure, I reckon--and these caitiff
+hildings making the very walls for to ring with their wicked foolish
+laughter!--Agatha! bring me hither the rod.  I will see if a good
+whipping bring not down your ill-beseen spirits, mistress!"
+
+Elaine turned pale, and cast a beseeching glance at the pleasanter of
+the ladies.
+
+"Nay, now, Cousin Meg," interposed she, "I pray you, let not this my
+first visit to Oakham be linked with trouble to these young maids.  I am
+well assured you know grey heads cannot be well set on green shoulders."
+
+"Lady, I am right unwilling to deny any bidding of yours.  But I do
+desire of you to tell me if it be not enough to provoke a saint to
+swear?"
+
+"What! to hear a young maid laugh, cousin?  Nay, soothly, I would not
+think so."
+
+Mistress Underdone had entered the room, and, after dropping a courtesy
+to each of the ladies, stood waiting the pleasure of her mistress.
+Clarice was slowly coming to the conclusion, with dire dismay, that the
+sharp-featured, sharp-tongued woman before her was no other than the
+Lady Margaret of Cornwall, her lovely lady with the pathetic eyes.
+
+"Give me the rod, Agatha," said the Countess, sternly.
+
+"Nay, Cousin Meg, I pray you, let Agatha give it to me."
+
+"_You'll_ not lay on!" said the Countess, with a contortion of her lips
+which appeared to do duty for a smile.
+
+"Trust me, I will do the right thing," replied Queen Blanche, taking the
+rod which Mistress Underdone presented to her on the knee.  "Now.
+Elaine, stand out here."
+
+Elaine, very pale and preternaturally grave, placed herself in the
+required position.
+
+"Say after me.  `I entreat pardon of my Lady for being so unhappy as to
+offend her.'"
+
+Elaine faltered out the dictated words.
+
+"Kiss the rod," said the Queen.
+
+She was immediately obeyed.
+
+"Now, Cousin Meg, for my sake, I pray you, let that suffice."
+
+"Well, Lady, for _your_ sake," responded the Countess, with apparent
+reluctance, looking rather like a kite from whose talons the Queen had
+extracted a sparrow intended for its dinner.
+
+"Sit you in this chamber, Cousin Meg?" asked the Queen, taking a curule
+chair as she spoke--the only one in the room.
+
+"Nay, Lady.  'Tis mine hour for repeating the seven penitential psalms.
+I have no time to waste with these giglots."
+
+"Then, I pray you, give me leave to abide here myself for a season."
+
+"You will do your pleasure, Lady.  I only pray of you to keep them from
+laughing and such like wickedness."
+
+"Nay, for I will not promise that for myself," said Queen Blanche, with
+a good-tempered smile.  "Go your ways, Meg; we will work no evil."
+
+The Countess turned and stalked out of the door again.  And Clarice's
+first castle in the air fell into pieces behind her.
+
+"Now, Agatha, I pray thee shut the door," said the Queen, "that we
+offend not my Cousin Margaret's ears in her psalms.  Fare ye all well,
+my maids?  Thy face is strange to me, child."
+
+Clarice courtesied very low.  "If it please the Lady Queen, I am but
+just come hither."
+
+She had to tell her name and sundry biographical particulars, and then,
+suddenly looking round, the Queen said, "And where is Heliet?"
+
+"Please it the Lady Queen, in my chamber," said Mistress Underdone.
+
+"Bid her hither, good Agatha--if she can come."
+
+"That can she, Lady."
+
+Mistress Underdone left the room, and in another minute the regular tap
+of approaching crutches was audible.  Clarice imagined their wearer to
+be some old woman--perhaps the mother of Mistress Underdone.  But as
+soon as the door was opened again, she was surprised and touched to
+perceive that the sufferer who used them was a girl little older than
+herself.  She came up to Queen Blanche, who welcomed her with a smile,
+and held her hand to the girl's lips to be kissed.  This was her only
+way of paying homage, for to her courtesying and kneeling were alike
+impossible.
+
+Clarice felt intuitively, as she looked into Heliet's face, that here
+was a girl entirely different from the rest.  She seemed as if Nature
+had intended her to be tall, but had stopped and stunted her when only
+half grown.  Her shoulders were unnaturally high, and one leg was
+considerably shorter than the other.  Her face was not in any way
+beautiful, yet there was a certain mysterious attraction about it.
+Something looked out of her eyes which Clarice studied without being
+able to define, but which disposed her to keep on looking.  They were
+dark, pathetic eyes, of the kind with which Clarice had gifted her very
+imaginary Countess; but there was something beyond the pathos.
+
+"It looks," thought Clarice, "as if she had gone through the pathos and
+the suffering, and had come out on the other side--on the shore of the
+Golden Land, where they see what everything meant, and are satisfied."
+
+There was very little time for conversation before the supper-bell rang.
+Queen Blanche made kind inquiries concerning Heliet's lameness and
+general health, but had not reached any other subject when the sound of
+the bell thrilled through the room.  The four girls rapidly folded up
+their work, as though the summons were welcome.  Queen Blanche rose and
+departed, with a kindly nod to all, and Heliet, turning to Clarice,
+said, "Wilt thou come down with me?  I cannot go fast, as thou mayest
+see; but thou wilt sit next to me, and I can tell thee anything thou
+mayest wish to know."
+
+Clarice thankfully assented, and they went down the spiral staircase
+together into the great hall, where three tables were spread.  At the
+highest and smallest, on the dais, were already seated the Queen and the
+Countess, two gentlemen, and two priests.  At the head of the second
+stood Mistress Underdone, next to whom was Diana, and Heliet led up
+Clarice to her side.  They faced the dais, so that Clarice could watch
+its distinguished occupants at her pleasure.  Tables for meals, at that
+date, were simply boards placed on trestles, and removed when the repast
+was over.  On the table at the dais was silver plate, then a rare
+luxury, restricted to the highest classes, the articles being spoons,
+knives, plates, and goblets.  There were no forks, for only one fork had
+ever then been heard of as a thing to eat with, and this had been the
+invention of the wife of a Doge of Venice, about two hundred years
+previous, for which piece of refinement the public rewarded the lady by
+considering her as proud as Lucifer.  Forks existed, both in the form of
+spice-forks and fire-forks, but no one ever thought of eating with them
+in England until they were introduced from Italy in the reign of James
+the First, and for some time after that the use of them marked either a
+traveller, or a luxurious, effeminate man.  Moreover, there were no
+knives nor spoons provided for helping one's self from the dishes.  Each
+person had a knife and spoon for himself, with which he helped himself
+at his convenience.  People who were very delicate and particular wiped
+their knives on a piece of bread before doing so, and licked their
+spoons all over.  When these were the practices of fastidious people,
+the proceedings of those who were not such may be discreetly left to
+imagination.  The second table was served in a much more ordinary
+manner.  In this instance the knife was iron and the spoon pewter, the
+plate a wooden trencher (never changed), and the drinking-cup of horn.
+In the midst of the table stood a pewter salt-cellar, formed like a
+castle, and _very_ much larger than we use them now.
+
+This salt-cellar acted as a barometer, not for weather, but for rank.
+Every one of noble blood, or filling certain offices, sat above the
+salt.
+
+With respect to cooking our fathers had some peculiarities.  They ate
+many things that we never touch, such as porpoises and herons, and they
+used all manner of green things as vegetables.  They liked their bread
+hot from the oven (to give cold bread, even for dinner, was a shabby
+proceeding), and their meat much underdone, for they thought that
+overdone meat stirred up anger.  They mixed most incongruous things
+together; they loved very strong tastes, delighting in garlic and
+verjuice; they never appear to have paid the slightest regard to their
+digestion, and they were, in the most emphatic sense, not teetotallers.
+
+The dining-hall, but not the table, was decorated with flowers, and
+singers, often placed in a gallery at one end, were employed the whole
+time.  A gentleman usher acted as butler, and a yeoman was always at
+hand to keep out strange dogs, snuff candles, and light to bed the
+guests, who were not always in a condition to find their way upstairs
+without his help.  The hours at this time were nine or ten o'clock for
+dinner (except on fast-days, when it was at noon), and three or four for
+supper.  Two meals a day were thought sufficient for all men who were
+not invalids.  The sick and women sometimes had a "rear-supper" at six
+o'clock or later.  As to breakfast, it was a meal taken only by some
+persons, and then served in the bedchamber or private boudoir at
+convenience.  Wine, with bread sopped in it, was a favourite breakfast,
+especially for the old.  Very delicate or exceptionally temperate people
+took milk for breakfast; but though the Middle Ages present us with
+examples of both vegetarians and total abstainers, yet of both there
+were very few indeed, and they were mainly to be found among the
+religious orders.
+
+In watching the illustrious persons on the dais one thing struck Clarice
+as extremely odd, which would never be thought strange in the nineteenth
+century.  It was the custom in her day for husband and wife to sit
+together at a meal, and, the highest ranks excepted, to eat from the
+same plate.  But the Earl and Countess of Cornwall were on opposite
+sides of the table, with one of the priests between them.  Clarice
+thought they must have quarrelled, and softly demanded of Heliet if that
+were the case.
+
+"No, indeed," was Heliet's rather sorrowful answer.  "At least, not more
+than usual.  The Lady of Cornwall will never sit beside her baron, and,
+as thou shalt shortly see, she will not even speak to him."
+
+"Not speak to him!" exclaimed Clarice.
+
+"I never heard her do so yet," said Heliet.
+
+"Does he entreat her very harshly?"
+
+"There are few gentlemen more kindly or generous towards a wife.  Nay,
+the harsh treatment is all on her side."
+
+"What a miserable life to live!" commented Clarice.
+
+"I fear he finds it so," said Heliet.
+
+The dillegrout, or white soup, was now brought in, and Clarice, being
+hungry, attended more to her supper than to her mistress for a time.
+But during the next interval between the courses she studied her master.
+
+He was a tall and rather fine-looking man, with a handsome face and a
+gentle, pleasant expression.
+
+There certainly was not in his exterior any cause for repulsion.  His
+hair was light, his eyes bluish-grey.  He seemed--or Clarice thought so
+at first--a silent man, who left conversation very much to others; but
+the decidedly intelligent glances of the grey eyes, and an occasional
+twinkle of fun in them when any amusing remark was made, showed that he
+was not in the least devoid of brains.
+
+Clarice thought that the priest who sat between the Earl and Countess
+was a far more unprepossessing individual than his master.  He was a
+Franciscan friar, in the robe of his order; while the friar who sat on
+the other side of the Countess was a Dominican, and much more agreeable
+to look at.
+
+At this juncture the Earl of Lancaster, who bore a strong family
+likeness to his cousin, the Earl of Cornwall--a likeness which extended
+to character no less than person--inquired of the latter if any news had
+been heard lately from France.
+
+"I have had no letters lately," replied his host; and, turning to the
+Countess, he asked, "Have you, Lady?"
+
+Now, thought Clarice, she must speak to him.  Much to her surprise, the
+Countess, imagining, apparently, that the Franciscan friar was her
+questioner, answered, [Note 1], "None, holy Father."
+
+The friar gravely turned his head and repeated the words to the Earl,
+though he must have heard them.  And Clarice became aware all at once
+that her own puzzled face was a source of excessive amusement to her
+_vis-a-vis_, Elaine.  Her eyes inquired the reason.
+
+"Oh, I know!" said Elaine, in a loud whisper across the table.  "I know
+what perplexes thee.  They are all like that when they first come.  It
+is such fun to watch them!"
+
+And she did not succeed in repressing a convulsion behind her
+handkerchief, even with the aid of Diana's "Elaine! do be sensible."
+
+"Hush, my maid," said Mistress Underdone, gently.  "If the Lady see thee
+laugh--"
+
+"I shall be sent away without more supper, I know," said Elaine,
+shrugging her shoulders.  "It is Clarice who ought to be punished, not
+I.  I cannot help laughing when she looks so funny."
+
+Elaine having succeeded in recovering her gravity without attracting the
+notice of the Countess, Clarice devoured her helping of salt beef along
+with much cogitation concerning her mistress's singular ways.  Still,
+she could not restrain a supposition that the latter must have supposed
+the priest to speak to her, when she heard the Earl say, "I hear from
+Geoffrey Spenser, [Note 2], that our stock of salt ling is beyond what
+is like to be wanted.  Methinks the villeins might have a cade or two
+thereof, my Lady."
+
+And again, turning to the friar, the Countess made answer, "It shall be
+seen to, holy Father;" while the friar, with equal composure, as though
+it were quite a matter of course, repeated to the Earl, "The Lady will
+see to it, my Lord."
+
+"Does she always answer him so?" demanded Clarice of Heliet, in an
+astonished whisper.  "Always," replied Heliet, with a sad smile.  "But
+surely," said Clarice, her amazement getting the better of her shyness,
+"it must be very wanting in reverence from a dame to her baron!"
+
+Clarice's ideas of wifely duty were of a very primitive kind.  Unbounded
+reverence, unreasoning obedience, and diligent care for the husband's
+comfort and pleasure were the main items.  As for love, in the sense in
+which it is usually understood now, that was an item which simply might
+come into the question, but it was not necessary by any means.  Parents,
+at that time, kept it out of the matter as much as possible, and
+regarded it as more of an encumbrance than anything else.
+
+"It is a very sad tale, Clarice," answered Heliet, in a low tone.  "He
+loves her, and would cherish her dearly if she would let him.  But there
+is not any love in her.  When she was a young maid, almost a child, she
+set her heart on being a nun, and I think she has never forgiven her
+baron for being the innocent means of preventing her.  I scarcely know
+which of them is the more to be pitied."
+
+"Oh, he, surely!" exclaimed Clarice.
+
+"Nay, I am not so sure.  God help those who are unloved! but, far more,
+God help those who cannot love!  I think she deserves the more
+compassion of the two."
+
+"May be," answered Clarice, slowly--her thoughts were running so fast
+that her words came with hesitation.  "But what shouldst thou say to one
+that had outlived a sorrowful love, and now thought it a happy chance
+that it had turned out contrary thereto?"
+
+"It would depend upon how she had outlived it," responded Heliet,
+gravely.
+
+"I heard one say, not many days gone," remarked Clarice--not meaning to
+let Heliet know from whom she had heard it--"that when she was young she
+loved a squire of her father, which did let her from wedding with him;
+and that now she was right thankful it so were, for he was killed on the
+field, and left never a plack behind him, and she was far better off,
+being now wed unto a gentleman of wealth and substance.  What shouldst
+thou say to that?"
+
+"If it were one of any kin to thee I would as lief say nothing to it,"
+was Heliet's rather dry rejoinder.
+
+"Nay, heed not that; I would fain know."
+
+"Then I think the squire may have loved her, but so did she never him."
+
+"In good sooth," said Clarice, "she told me she slept many a night on a
+wet pillow."
+
+"So have I seen a child that had broken his toy," replied Heliet,
+smiling.
+
+Clarice saw pretty plainly that Heliet thought such a state of things
+was not love at all.
+
+"But how else can love be outlived?" she said.
+
+"Love cannot.  But sorrow may be."
+
+"Some folks say love and sorrow be nigh the same."
+
+"Nay, 'tis sin and sorrow that be nigh the same.  All selfishness is
+sin, and very much of what men do commonly call love is but pure
+selfishness."
+
+"Well, I never loved none yet," remarked Clarice.
+
+"God have mercy on thee!" answered Heliet.
+
+"Wherefore?" demanded Clarice, in surprise.
+
+"Because," said Heliet, softly, "`he that loveth not knoweth not God,
+for God is charity.'"
+
+"Art thou destined for the cloister?" asked Clarice.
+
+Only priests, monks, and nuns, in her eyes, had any business to talk
+religiously, or might reasonably be expected to do so.
+
+"I am destined to fulfil that which is God's will for me," was Heliet's
+simple reply.  "Whether that will be the cloister or no I have not yet
+learned."
+
+Clarice cogitated upon this reply while she ate stewed apples.
+
+"Thou hast an odd name," she said, after a pause.
+
+"What, Heliet?" asked its bearer, with a smile.  "It is taken from the
+name of the holy prophet Elye, [Elijah] of old time."
+
+"Is it?  But I mean the other."
+
+"Ah, I love it not," said Heliet.
+
+"No, it is very queer," replied Clarice, with an apologetic blush, "very
+odd--Underdone!"
+
+"Oh, but that is not my name," answered Heliet, quickly, with a little
+laugh; "but it is quite as bad.  It is Pride."
+
+Clarice fancied she had heard the name before, but she could not
+remember where.
+
+"But why is it bad?" said she.  "Then I reckon Mistress Underdone hath
+been twice wed?"
+
+"She hath," said Heliet, answering the last question first, as people
+often do, "and my father was her first husband.  Why is pride evil?
+Surely thou knowest that."
+
+"Oh, I know it is one of the seven deadly sins, of course," responded
+Clarice, quickly; "still it is very necessary and noble."
+
+Heliet's smile expressed a mixture of feelings.  Clarice was not the
+first person who has held one axiom theoretically, but has practically
+behaved according to another.
+
+"The Lord saith that He hates pride," said the lame girl, softly.  "How,
+then, can it be necessary, not to say noble?"
+
+"Oh, but--" Clarice went no further.
+
+"But He did not mean what He said?"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course!" said Clarice.  "But--"
+
+"Better drop the _but_," said Heliet, quaintly.  "And Father Bevis is
+about to say grace."
+
+The Dominican friar rose and returned thanks for the repast, and the
+company broke up, the Earl and Countess, with their guests, leaving the
+hall by the upper door, while the household retired by the lower.
+
+The preparations for sleep were almost as primitive as those for meals.
+Exalted persons, such as the Earl and Countess, slept in handsome
+bedsteads, of the tent form, hung with silk curtains, and spread with
+coverlets of fur, silk, or tapestry.  They washed in silver basins, with
+ewers of the same costly metal; and they sat, the highest rank in curule
+chairs, the lower upon velvet-cove red forms or stools.  But ordinary
+people, of whom Clarice was one, were not provided for in this luxurious
+style.  Bower-maidens slept in pallet-beds, which were made extremely
+low, so as to run easily under one of the larger bedsteads, and thus be
+put out of the way.  All beds rejoiced in a quantity of pillows.  Our
+ancestors made much more use of pillows and cushions than we--a fact
+easily accounted for, considering that they had no softly-stuffed
+chairs, but only upright ones of hard carved wood.  But Clarice's sheets
+were simple "cloth of Rennes," while those of her mistress were set with
+jewels.  Her mattress was stuffed with hay instead of wool; she had
+neither curtains nor fly-nets, and her coverlet was of plain cloth,
+unwrought by the needle.  In the matter of blankets they fared alike
+except as to quality.  But in the bower-maidens' chamber, where all the
+girls slept together, there were no basins of any material.  Early in
+the morning a strong-armed maid came in, bearing a tub of water, which
+she set down on one of the coffers of carved oak which stood at the foot
+of each bed and held all the personal treasures of the sleeper.  Then,
+by means of a mop which she brought with her, she gently sprinkled every
+face with water, thus intimating that it was time to get up.  The tub
+she left behind.  It was to provide--on the principle of "first come,
+first served"--for the ablutions of all the five young ladies, though
+each had her personal towel.  Virtue was thus its own reward, the
+laziest girl being obliged to content herself with the dirtiest water.
+It must, however, be remembered that she was a fastidious damsel who
+washed more than face and hands.
+
+They then dressed themselves, carefully tying their respective amulets
+round their necks, without which proceeding they would have anticipated
+all manner of ill luck to befall them during the day.  These articles
+were small boxes of the nature of a locket, containing either a little
+dust of one saint, a shred of the conventual habit of another, or a few
+verses from a gospel, written very minutely, and folded up extremely
+small.  Then each girl, as she was ready, knelt in the window, and
+gabbled over in Latin, which she did not understand, a Paternoster, ten
+Aves, and the Angelical Salutation, not unfrequently breaking eagerly
+into the conversation almost before the last Amen had left her lips.
+Prayers over, they passed into the sitting-room next door, where they
+generally found a basket of manchet bread and biscuits, with a large jug
+of ale or wine.  A gentleman usher called for Mistress Underdone and her
+charges, and conducted them to mass in the chapel.  Here they usually
+found the Earl and Countess before them, who alone, except the priests,
+were accommodated with seats.  Each girl courtesied first to the altar,
+then to the Countess, and lastly to the Earl, before she took her
+allotted place.  The Earl always returned the salutation by a quiet
+inclination of his head.  The Countess sat in stony dignity, and never
+took any notice of it.  Needlework followed until dinner, after which
+the Countess gave audience for an hour to any person desiring to see
+her, and usually concluded it by a half-hour's nap.  Further needlework,
+for such as were not summoned to active attendance on their mistress if
+she went out, lasted until vespers, after which supper was served.
+After supper was the recreation time, when in most houses the
+bower-maidens enjoyed themselves with the gentlemen of the household in
+games or dancing in the hall; but the Lady Margaret strictly forbade any
+such frivolous doings in her maidens.  They were still confined to their
+own sitting-room, except on some extraordinary occasion, and the only
+amusements allowed them were low-toned conversation, chess, draughts, or
+illumination.  Music, dancing (even by the girls alone), noisy games of
+all kinds, and laughter, the Countess strictly forbade.  The practical
+result was that the young ladies fell back upon gossip and
+ghost-stories, until there were few nights in the year when Roisia would
+have dared to go to bed by herself for a king's ransom.  An hour before
+bed-time wine and cakes were served.  After this Mistress Underdone
+recited the Rosary, the girls making the responses, and at eight
+o'clock--a late hour at that time--they trooped off to bed.  All were
+expected to be in bed and all lights out by half-past eight.  The
+unlucky maiden who loitered or was accidentally hindered had to finish
+her undressing in the dark.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  This strange habit of the Countess is a fact, and sorely
+distressed the Earl, as he has himself put on record, though with all
+his annoyance he shows himself quite conscious of the comicality of the
+proceeding.
+
+Note 2.  The _depenseur_, or family provider.  Hence comes the name of
+Le Despenser, which, therefore, should not be spelt Despencer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+ON THE THRESHOLD OF LIFE.
+
+  "I will not dream of him handsome and strong--
+  My ideal love may be weak and slight;
+  It matters not to what class he belong,
+  He would be noble enough in my sight;
+  But he must be courteous toward the lowly,
+  To the weak and sorrowful, loving too;
+  He must be courageous, refined, and holy,
+  By nature exalted, and firm, and true."
+
+By the time that Clarice had been six weeks at Oakham she had pretty
+well made up her mind as to the characters of her companions.  The
+Countess did not belie the estimate formed on first seeing her.  The
+gentle, mournful, loving woman of Clarice's dreams had vanished, never
+to be recalled.  The girl came to count that a red-letter day on which
+she did not see her mistress.  Towards the Earl her feeling was an odd
+mixture of reverential liking and compassion.  He came far nearer the
+ideal picture than his wife.  His manners were unusually gentle and
+considerate of others, and he was specially remarkable for one trait
+very rarely found in the Middle Ages--he was always thoughtful of those
+beneath him.  Another peculiarity he had, not common in his time; he was
+decidedly a humourist.  The comic side even of his own troubles was
+always patent to him.  Yet he was a man of extremely sensitive feeling,
+as well as of shrewd and delicate perceptions.  He lived a most
+uncomfortable life, and he was quite aware of it.  The one person who
+should have been his truest friend deliberately nursed baseless enmity
+towards him.  The only one whom he loved in all the world hated him with
+deadly hatred.  And there was no cause for it but one--the strongest
+cause of all--the reason why Cain slew his brother.  He was of God, and
+she was of the world.  Yet nothing could have persuaded her that he was
+not on the high road to perdition, while she was a special favourite of
+Heaven.
+
+Clarice found Mistress Underdone much what she had expected--a
+good-natured, sensible supervisor.  Her position, too, was not an easy
+one.  She had to submit her sense to the orders of folly, and to sink
+her good-nature in submission to harshness.  But she did her best,
+steered as delicately as she could between her Scylla and Charybdis, and
+always gave her girls the benefit of a doubt.
+
+The girls themselves were equally distinct as to character.  Olympias
+was delicate, with a failing of delicate people--a disposition to
+complaining and fault-finding.  Elaine was full of fun, ready to barter
+any advantage in the future for enjoyment in the present.  Diana was
+caustic, proud of her high connections, which were a shade above those
+of her companions, and inclined to be scornful towards everything not
+immediately patent to her comprehension.  Roisia, while the most
+amiable, was also the weakest in character of the four; she was easily
+led astray by Elaine, easily persuaded to deviate from the right through
+fear of Diana.
+
+The two priests had also unfolded themselves.  The Dominican, Father
+Bevis, awoke in Clarice a certain amount of liking, not unmixed with
+rather timorous respect.  But he was a grave, silent, undemonstrative
+man, who gave no encouragement to anything like personal affection,
+though he was not harsh nor unkind.  The Franciscan, Father Miles, was
+of a type common in his day.  The man and the priest were two different
+characters.  Father Miles in the confessional was a stern master; Father
+Miles at the supper-table was a jovial playfellow.  In his eyes,
+religion was not the breath and salt of life, but something altogether
+separate from it, and only to be mentioned on a Sunday.  It was a bundle
+of ceremonies, not a living principle.  To Father Bevis, on the
+contrary, religion was everything or nothing.  If it had anything to do
+with a man at all, it must pervade his thoughts and his life.  It was
+the leaven which leavened the whole lump; the salt whose absence left
+all unsavoury and insipid; the breath, which virtually was identical
+with life.  One mistake Father Bevis made, a very natural mistake to a
+man who had been repressed, misunderstood; and disliked, as he had been
+ever since he could remember--he did not realise sufficiently that
+warmth was a necessity of life, and that young creatures more especially
+required a certain brooding tenderness to develop their faculties.  No
+one had ever given him love but God; and he was too apt to suppose that
+religion could be fostered only in that way which had cherished his own.
+His light burned bright to Godward, but it was not sufficiently visible
+to men.
+
+Clarice La Theyn had by this time discovered that there were other
+people in the household beyond those already mentioned.  The Earl had
+four squires of the body, and the Countess two pages in waiting, beside
+a meaner crowd of dressers, sewers, porters, messengers, and all kinds
+of officials.  The squires and the pages were the only ones who came
+much in contact with the bower-maidens.
+
+Both the pages were boys of about fifteen, of whom Osbert was quiet and
+sedate for a boy, while Jordan was _espiegle_ and full of mischievous
+tricks.  The squires demand longer notice.
+
+Reginald de Echingham was the first to attract Clarice's notice--a fact
+which, in Reginald's eyes, would only have been natural and proper.  He
+was a handsome young man, and no one was better aware of it than
+himself.  His principal virtue lay in a silky moustache, which he
+perpetually caressed.  The Earl called him Narcissus, and he deserved
+it.
+
+Next came Fulk de Chaucombe, who was about as careless of his personal
+appearance as Reginald was careful.  He looked on his brother squire
+with ineffable disdain, as a man only fit to hunt out rhymes for
+sonnets, and hold skeins of silk for ladies.  Call him a man! thought
+Master Fulk, with supreme contempt.  Fulk's notion of manly occupations
+centred in war, with an occasional tournament by way of dessert.
+
+Third on the list was Vivian Barkworth.  To Clarice, at least, he was a
+perplexity.  He was so chameleon-like that she could not make up her
+mind about him.  He could be extremely attractive when he liked, and he
+could be just as repellent.
+
+Least frequently of any were her thoughts given to Ademar de Gernet.
+She considered him at first entirely colourless.  He was not talkative;
+he was neither handsome nor ugly; he showed no special characteristic
+which would serve to label him.  She merely put him on one side, and
+never thought of him unless she happened to see him.
+
+Her fellow bower-maidens also had their ideas concerning these young
+gentlemen.  Olympias was--or fancied herself--madly in love with the
+handsome Reginald, on whom Elaine cracked jokes and played tricks, and
+Diana exhausted all her satire.  As to Reginald, he was too deeply in
+love with himself to be sensible of the attractions of any other person.
+It struck Clarice as very odd when she found that the weak and gentle
+Roisia was a timid admirer of the bear-like De Chaucombe.  As for Diana,
+her shafts were levelled impartially at all; but in her inmost heart
+Clarice fancied that she liked Vivian Barkeworth.  Elaine was
+heart-whole, and plainly showed it.
+
+The Countess had not improved on further acquaintance.  She was not only
+a tyrant, but a capricious one.  Not merely was penalty sure to follow
+on not pleasing her, but it was not easy to say what would please her at
+any given moment.
+
+"We might as well be in a nunnery!" exclaimed Diana.
+
+"Nay," said Elaine, "for then we could not get out."
+
+"Don't flatter thyself on getting out, pray," returned Diana.  "We shall
+never get out except by marrying, or really going into a nunnery."
+
+"For which I am sure I have no vocation," laughed Elaine.  "Oh, no!  I
+shall marry; and won't I lead my baron a dance!"
+
+"Who is it to be, Elaine?" asked Clarice.
+
+"_Ha, chetife_!  How do I know?  The Lady will settle that.  I only hope
+it won't be a man who puts oil on his hair and scents himself."
+
+This remark was a side-thrust at Reginald, as Olympias well knew, and
+she looked reproachfully at Elaine.
+
+"Well, I hope it won't be one who kills half-a-dozen men every morning
+before breakfast," said Diana, making a hit at Fulk.
+
+It was Roisia's turn to look reproachful.  Clarice could not help
+laughing.
+
+"What dost thou think of our giddy speeches, Heliet?" said she.
+
+Heliet looked up with her bright smile.
+
+"Very like maidens' fancies," she said.  "For me, I am never like to
+wed, so I can look on from the outside."
+
+"But what manner of man shouldst thou fancy, Heliet?"
+
+"Oh ay, do tell us!" cried more than one voice.
+
+"I warrant he'll be a priest," said Elaine.
+
+"He will have fair hair and soft manners," remarked Olympias.
+
+"Nay, he shall have such hair as shall please God," said Heliet, more
+gravely.  "But he must be gentle and loving, above all to the weak and
+sorrowful: a true knight, to whom every woman is a holy thing, to be
+guarded and tended with care.  He must put full affiance in God, and
+love Him supremely: and next, me; and below that, all other.  He must
+not fear danger, yet without fool-hardiness; but he must fear disgrace,
+and fear and hate sin.  He must be true to himself, and must aim at
+making of himself the best man that ever he can.  He must not be afraid
+of ridicule, or of being thought odd.  He must have firm convictions,
+and be ready to draw sword for them, without looking to see whether
+other men be on the same side or not.  His heart must be open to all
+misery, his brain to all true and innocent knowledge, his hand ready to
+redress every wrong not done to himself.  For his enemies he must have
+forgiveness; for his friends, unswerving constancy: for all men,
+courtesy."
+
+"And that is thy model man?  _Ha, jolife_!" cried Elaine.  "Why, I could
+not stand a month of him."
+
+"I am afraid he would be rather soft and flat," said Diana, with a curl
+of her lip.
+
+"No, I don't think that," answered Roisia.  "But I should like to know
+where Heliet expects to find him."
+
+"Do give his address, Heliet!" said Elaine, laughing.
+
+"Ah!  I never knew but one that answered to that description," was
+Heliet's reply.
+
+"_Ha, jolife_!" cried Elaine, clapping her hands.  "Now for his name!  I
+hope I know him--but I am sure I don't."
+
+"You all know His name," said Heliet, gravely.  "How many of us know
+_Him_?  For indeed, I know of no such man that ever lived, except only
+Jesus Christ our Lord."
+
+There was no answer.  A hush seemed to have fallen on the whole party,
+which was at last broken by Olympias.
+
+"Well, but--thou knowest we cannot have Him."
+
+"Pardon me, I know no such thing," answered Heliet, in the same soft,
+grave tone.  "Does not the Psalmist say, `_Portio mea, Domine_'?  [Note
+1] And does not Solomon say, `_Dilectus meus mihi_?'  [Note 2.] Is it
+not the very glory of His infinitude, that all who are His can have all
+of Him?"
+
+"Where did Heliet pick up these queer notions?" said Diana under her
+breath.
+
+"She goes to such extremes!"  Elaine whispered back.
+
+"But all that means to go into the cloister," replied Olympias in a
+discontented tone.
+
+"Nay," said Heliet, taking up her crutches, "I hope a few will go to
+Heaven who do not go into the cloister.  But we may rest assured of
+this, that not one will go there who has not chosen Christ for his
+portion."
+
+"Well," said Diana, calmly, a minute after Heliet had disappeared, "I
+suppose she means to be a nun!  But she might let that alone till she is
+one."
+
+"Let what alone?" asked Roisia.
+
+"Oh, all that parson's talk," returned Diana.  "It is all very well for
+priests and nuns, but secular people have nothing to do with it."
+
+"I thought even secular people wanted to go to Heaven," coolly put in
+Elaine, not because she cared a straw for the question, but because she
+delighted in taking the opposite side to Diana.
+
+"Let them go, then!" responded Diana, rather sharply.  "They can keep it
+to themselves, can't they?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Elaine, laughing.  "Some people cannot keep
+things to themselves.  Just look at Olympias, whatever she is doing, how
+she argues the whole thing out in public.  `Oh, shall I go or not?  Yes,
+I think I will; no, I won't, though; yes, but I will; oh, can't somebody
+tell me what to do?'"
+
+Elaine's mimicry was so perfect that Olympias herself joined in the
+laugh.  The last-named damsel carried on all her mental processes in
+public, instead of presenting her neighbours, as most do, with results
+only.  And when people wear their hearts upon their sleeves, the daws
+will come and peck at them.
+
+"Now, don't tease Olympias," said Roisia good-naturedly.
+
+"Oh, let one have a bit of fun," said Elaine, "when one lives in a
+convent of the strictest order."
+
+"I suspect thou wouldst find a difference if thou wert to enter one,"
+sneered Diana.
+
+Elaine would most likely have fought out the question had not Mistress
+Underdone entered at that moment with a plate of gingerbread in her hand
+smoking hot from the oven.
+
+"Oh, Mistress, I am so hungry!" plaintively observed that young lady.
+
+Mistress Underdone laughed, and set down the plate.  "There, part the
+spice-cake among you," said she.  "And when you be through, I have
+somewhat to tell you."
+
+"Tell us now," said Elaine, as well as a mouthful of gingerbread allowed
+her to speak.
+
+"Let me see, now--what day is this?" inquired Mistress Underdone.
+
+All the voices answered her at once, "Saint Dunstan's Eve!"  [May 13th].
+
+"So it is.  Well--come Saint Botolph, [June 17th] as I have but now
+learned, we go to Whitehall."
+
+"_Ha, jolife_!" cried Diana, Elaine, and Roisia at once.
+
+"Will Heliet go too?" asked Clarice, softly.
+
+"Oh, no; Heliet never leaves Oakham," responded Olympias.
+
+Mistress Underdone looked kindly at Clarice.  "No, Heliet will not go,"
+she said.  "She cannot ride, poor heart."  And the mother sighed, as if
+she felt the prospective pain of separation.
+
+"But there will be dozens of other maidens," said Elaine.  "There are
+plenty of girls in the world beside Heliet."
+
+Clarice was beginning to think there hardly were for her.
+
+"Oh, thou dost not know what thou wilt see at Westminster!" exclaimed
+Elaine.  "The Lord King, and the Lady Queen, and all the Court; and the
+Abbey, with all its riches, and ever so many maids and gallants.  It is
+delicious beyond description, when the Lady is away visiting some
+shrine, and she does that nearly every day."
+
+Roisia's "Hush!" had come too late.
+
+"I pray you say that again, my mistress!" said the well-known voice of
+the Lady Margaret in the doorway.  "Nay, I will have it.--Fetch me the
+rod, Agatha.--Now then, minion, what saidst?  Thou caitiff giglot!  If I
+had thee not in hand, that tongue of thine should bring thee to ruin.
+What saidst, hussy?"
+
+And Elaine had to repeat the unlucky words, with the birch in prospect,
+and immediately afterwards in actuality.
+
+"I will lock thee up when I go visiting shrines!" said the Countess with
+her last stroke.  "Agatha, remember when we are at Westminster that I
+have said so."
+
+"Ay, Lady," observed Mistress Underdone, composedly.
+
+And the Lady Margaret, throwing down the birch, stalked away, and left
+the sobbing Elaine to resume her composure at her leisure.
+
+In a vaulted upper chamber of the Palace of Westminster, on a bright
+morning in June, four persons were seated.  Three, who were of the
+nobler sex, were engaged in converse; the last, a lady, sat apart with
+her embroidery in modest silence.  They were near relatives, for the men
+were respectively husband, brother-in-law, and uncle of the woman, and
+they were the most prominent members of the royal line of England, with
+one who did not belong to it.
+
+Foremost of the group was the King.  He was foremost in more senses than
+one, for, as is well known, Edward the First, like Saul, was higher than
+any of his people.  Moreover, he was as spare as he was tall, which made
+him look almost gigantic.  His forehead was large and broad, his
+features handsome and regular, but marred by that perpetual droop in his
+left eyelid which he had inherited from his father.  Hair and
+complexion, originally fair, had been bronzed by his Eastern campaigns
+till the crisp curling hair was almost black, and the delicate tint had
+acquired a swarthy hue.  He had a nose inclining to the Roman type, a
+broad chest, agile arms, and excessively long legs.  His dark eyes were
+soft when he was in a good temper, but fierce as a tiger's when roused
+to anger; and His Majesty's temper was--well, not precisely angelic.
+[Note 3.] It was like lightning, in being as sudden and fierce, but it
+did not resemble that natural phenomenon in disappearing as quickly as
+it had come.  On the contrary, Edward never forgot and hardly forgave an
+injury.  His abilities were beyond question, and, for his time, he was
+an unusually independent and original thinker.  His moral character,
+however, was worse than is commonly supposed, though it did not descend
+to the lowest depths it reached until after the death of his fair and
+faithful Leonor.
+
+The King's brother Edmund was that same Earl of Lancaster whom we have
+already seen at Oakham.  He was a man of smaller intellectual calibre
+than his royal brother, but of much pleasanter disposition.  Extreme
+gentleness was his principal characteristic, as it has been that of all
+our royal Edmunds, though in some instances it degenerated into
+excessive weakness.  This was not the case with the Earl of Lancaster.
+His great kindness of heart is abundantly attested by his own letters
+and his brother's State papers.
+
+William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, was the third member of the group,
+and he was the uncle of the royal brothers, being a son of their
+grandmother's second marriage with Hugh de Lusignan, Count de La Marche.
+Though he made a deep mark upon his time, yet his character is not easy
+to fathom beyond two points--that his ability had in it a little element
+of craft, and that he took reasonable care of Number One.
+
+Over the head of the lady who sat in the curule chair, quietly
+embroidering, twenty-five years had passed since she had been styled by
+a poet, "the loveliest lady in all the land."  She was hardly less even
+now, when her fifty years were nearly numbered; when, unseen by any
+earthly eyes, her days were drawing to their close, and the angel of
+death stood close beside her, ready to strike before six months should
+be fulfilled.  Certainly, according to modern ideas of beauty, never was
+a queen fairer than Leonor the Faithful, and very rarely has there been
+one as fair.  And--more unusual still--she was as good as she was
+beautiful.  The worst loss in all her husband's life was the loss of
+her.
+
+So far from seeing any sorrow looming in the future was King Edward at
+this moment, that he was extremely jubilant over a project which he had
+just brought to a successful issue.
+
+"There!" said he, rubbing his hands in supreme satisfaction, "that
+parchment settles the business.  When both my brother of Scotland and I
+are gone, our children will reign over one empire, king and queen of
+both.  Is not that worth living for?"
+
+"_Soit_!"  [Be it so] ejaculated De Valence, shrugging his Provencal
+shoulders.  "A few acres of bare moss and a handful of stags, to say
+nothing of the barbarians who dwell up in those misty regions.  A fine
+matter surely to clap one's hands over!"
+
+"Ah, fair uncle, you never travelled in Scotland," interposed the gentle
+Lancaster, before the King could blaze up, "and you know not what sort
+of country it is.  From what I have heard, it would easily match your
+land in respect of beauty."
+
+"Match Poitou? or Provence?  Cousin, you must have taken leave of your
+senses.  You were not born on the banks of the Isere, or you would not
+chatter such treason as that."
+
+"Truly no, fair Uncle, for I was born in the City of London, just
+beyond," said Lancaster, with a good-humoured laugh; "and, verily, that
+would rival neither Scotland nor Poitou, to say nothing of Dauphine and
+Provence.  The goddess of beauty was not in attendance when I was born."
+
+Perhaps few would have ventured on that assertion except himself.
+Edmund of Lancaster was among the most handsome of our princes.
+
+"Beshrew you both!" cried King Edward, unfraternally; "wherever will
+these fellows ramble with their tongues?  Who said anything about
+beauty?  I care not, I, if the maiden Margaret were the ugliest lass
+that ever tied a kerchief, so long as she is the heiress of Scotland.
+Ned has beauty enough and to spare; let him stare in the glass if he
+cannot look at his wife."
+
+The Queen looked up with an amused expression, and would, perhaps, have
+spoken, had not the tapestry been lifted by some person unseen, and a
+little boy of six years old bounded into the room.
+
+No wonder that the fire in the King's eyes died into instant softness.
+It would have been a wonder if the parents had not been proud of that
+boy, for he was one of the loveliest children on whom human eye ever
+rested.  Did it ever cross the minds of that father and mother that the
+kindest deed they could have done to that darling child would have been
+to smother him in his cradle?  Had the roll of his life been held up
+before them at that moment, they would have counted only thirty-seven
+years, written within and without in lamentation, and mourning, and woe.
+
+King Edward lifted his little heir upon his knee.
+
+"Look here, Ned," said he.  "Seest yonder parchment?"
+
+The blue eyes opened a little, and the fair curls shook with a nod of
+affirmation.
+
+"What is it, thinkest?"
+
+A shake of the pretty little head was the reply.
+
+"Thy Cousin Margaret is coming to dwell with thee.  That parchment will
+bring her."
+
+"How old is she?" asked the Prince.
+
+"But just a year younger than thou."
+
+"Is she nice?"
+
+The King laughed.  "How can I tell thee?  I never saw her."
+
+"Will she play with us?"
+
+"I should think she will.  She is just between thee and Beatrice."
+
+"Beatrice is only a baby!" remarked the Prince disdainfully.  Six years
+old is naturally scornful of four.
+
+"Not more of a baby than thou," said his uncle Lancaster, playfully.
+
+"But she's a girl, and I'm a man!" cried the insulted little Prince.
+
+King Edward, excessively amused, set his boy down on the floor.  "There,
+run to thy mother," said he.  "Thou wilt be a man one of these days, I
+dare say; but not just yet, Master Ned."
+
+And no angel voice whispered to one of them that it would have been well
+for that child if he had never been a man, nor that ere he was six
+months older, the mother, whose death was a worse calamity to him than
+to any other, and the little Norwegian lassie to whom he was now
+betrothed, would pass almost hand in hand into the silent land.  Three
+months later, Margaret, Princess of Norway and Queen of Scotland, set
+sail from her father's coast for her mother's kingdom, whence she was to
+travel to England, and be brought up under the tender care of the royal
+Leonor as its future queen.  But one of the sudden and terrible storms
+of the North Sea met her ere she reached the shore of Scotland.  She
+just lived to be flung ashore at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, and there, in
+the pitying hands of the fishers' wives, the child breathed out her
+little life, having lived five years, and reigned for nearly as long.
+Who of us, looking back to the probable lot that would have awaited her
+in England, shall dare to pity that little child?
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  "Thou art my portion, O Lord."--Psalm 119, verse 57.
+
+Note 2.  "My beloved is mine."--Canticles 2, verse 16.
+
+Note 3.  Two anecdotes may be given which illustrate this in a manner
+almost comical; the first has been published more than once, the latter
+has not to my knowledge.  When his youngest daughter Elizabeth was
+married to the Earl of Hereford in 1302, the King, annoyed by some
+unfortunate remark of the bride, snatched her coronet from her head and
+threw it into the fire, nor did the Princess recover it undamaged.  In
+1305, writing to John de Fonteyne, the physician of his second wife,
+Marguerite of France, who was then ill of small-pox, the King warns him
+not on any account to allow the Queen to exert herself until she has
+completely recovered, "and if you do," adds the monarch in French, of
+considerably more force than elegance, and not too suitable for exact
+quotation, "you shall pay for it!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+WAITING AND WEARY.
+
+  "Oh! for the strength of God's right hand! the way is hard and dreary,
+  Through Him to walk and not to faint, to run and not be weary!"
+
+  E.L. Marzials.
+
+We left the Royal party in conversation in the chamber at Westminster.
+
+"Have you quite resolved, Sire, to expel all the Jews from England?"
+asked De Valence.
+
+"Resolved?  Yes; I hope it is half done," replied the King.  "You are
+aware, fair Uncle, that our Commons voted us a fifteenth on this
+condition?"
+
+"No, I did not hear that," said De Valence.
+
+"How many are there of those creatures?" inquired Lancaster.
+
+"How should I know?" returned Edward, with an oath.  "I only know that
+the Chancellor said the houses and goods were selling well to our
+profit."
+
+"Fifteen thousand and sixty, my Lord of Surrey told me," said Lancaster.
+"I doubted if it were not too high a computation; that is why I asked."
+
+"Oh, very likely not," responded Edward, carelessly.  "There are as many
+of them as gnats, and as much annoyance."
+
+"Well, it is a pious deed, of course," said Lancaster, stroking his
+moustache, not in the dilettante style of De Echingham, but like a man
+lost in thought.  "It seems a pity, though, for the women and children."
+
+"My cousin of Lancaster, I do believe, sings _Dirige_ over the chickens
+in his barnyard," sneered De Valence.
+
+Lancaster looked up with a good-tempered smile.
+
+"Does my fair Uncle never wish for the day when the lion shall eat straw
+like the ox?"  [Note 1.]
+
+"Not I!" cried De Valence, with a hearty laugh.  "Why, what mean you?
+are we to dine on a haunch of lion when it comes?"
+
+"Nay, for that were to make us worse than either, methinks.  I suppose
+we shall give over eating what has had life, at that time."
+
+"_Merci, mille fois_!" laughed his uncle.  "My dinner will be spoiled.
+Not thine, I dare say.  I'll be bound, Sire, our fair cousin will munch
+his apples and pears with all the gusto in the world, and send his
+squire to the stable to inquire if the lion has a straw doubled under
+him."
+
+"Bah!" said the King.  "What are you talking about?"
+
+"How much will this business of the Jews cost your Grace?" asked De
+Valence, dropping his sarcasms.
+
+"Cost _me_?" demanded Edward, with a short laugh.  "Did our fair uncle
+imagine we meant to execute such a project at our own expense?  Let the
+rogues pay their own travelling fees."
+
+"Ha! good!" said the Poitevin noble.  "And our fair cousin of Lancaster
+shall chant the _De Profundis_ while they embark, and I will offer a
+silver fibula to Saint Edward that they may all be drowned.  How sayest,
+fair Cousin?"
+
+"Nay," was Lancaster's answer, in a doubtful tone.  "I reckon we ought
+not to pity them, being they that crucified our Lord.  But--"
+
+But for all that, his heart cried out against his creed.  Yet it did not
+occur to him that the particular men who were being driven from their
+homes for no fault of theirs, and forced with keen irony of oppression
+to pay their own expenses, were not those who crucified Christ, but were
+removed from them by many generations.  The times of the Gentiles were
+not yet fulfilled, and the cry, "His blood be on us, _and on our
+children_" had not yet exhausted its awful power.
+
+There was one person not present who would heartily have agreed with
+Lancaster.  This was his cousin and namesake, Edmund, Earl of Cornwall,
+who not only felt for the lower animals--a rare yet occasional state of
+mind in the thirteenth century--but went further, and compassionated the
+villeins--a sentiment which very few indeed would have dreamed of
+sharing with him.  The labourers on the land were serfs, and had no
+feelings,--that is, none that could be recognised by the upper classes.
+They were liable to be sold with the land which they tilled; nor could
+they leave their "hundred" without a passport.  Their sons might not be
+educated to anything but agriculture; their daughters could not be
+married without paying a fine to the master.  Worse things than these
+are told of some, for of course the condition of the serf largely
+depended on the disposition of his owner.
+
+The journey from Oakham to Westminster was a pleasant change to all the
+bower-maidens but one, and that was the one selected to travel with her
+mistress in the litter.  Each was secretly, if not openly, hoping not to
+be that one; and it was with no little trepidation that Clarice received
+the news that this honour was to be conferred on her.  She discovered,
+however, on the journey, that scolding was not the perpetual occupation
+of the Countess.  She spent part of every day in telling her beads, part
+in reading books woefully dry to the apprehension of Clarice, and part
+in sleeping, which not unfrequently succeeded the beads.  Conversation
+she never attempted, and Clarice, who dared not speak till she was
+spoken to, began to entertain a fear of losing the use of her tongue.
+Otherwise she was grave and quiet enough, poor girl! for she was not
+naturally talkative.  She was very sorry to part with Heliet, and she
+felt, almost without knowing why, some apprehension concerning the
+future.  Sentiments of this sort were quite unknown to such girls as
+Elaine, Diana, and Roisia, while with Olympias they arose solely from
+delicate health.  But Clarice was made of finer porcelain, and she could
+not help mournfully feeling that she had not a friend in the world.  Her
+father and mother were not friends; they were strangers who might be
+expected to do what they thought best for her, just as the authorities
+of a workhouse might take conscientious care in the apprenticing of the
+workhouse girls.  But no more could be expected, and Clarice felt it.
+If there had only been, anywhere in the world, somebody who loved her!
+There was no such probability to which it was safe to look forward.
+Possibly, some twenty or thirty years hence, some of her children might
+love her.  As for her husband, he was simply an embarrassing future
+certainty, who--with almost equal certainty--would not care a straw
+about her.  That was only to be expected.  The squire who liked Roisia
+would be pretty sure to get Diana; while the girl who admired Reginald
+de Echingham was safe to fall to Fulk de Chaucombe.  Things always were
+arranged so in this world.  Perhaps, thought Clarice, those girls were
+the happiest who did not care, who took life as it came, and made all
+the fun they could out of it.  But she knew well that this was how life
+and she would never take each other.
+
+Whitehall was reached at last, on that eve of Saint Botolph.  Clarice
+was excessively tired, and only able to judge of the noise without, and
+the superb decorations and lofty rooms within.  Lofty, be it remembered,
+to her eyes; they would not look so to ours.  She supped upon salt
+merling [whiting], pease-cods [green peas], and stewed fruit, and was
+not sorry to get to bed.
+
+In the morning, she found the household considerably increased.  Her
+eyes were almost dazzled by the comers and goers; and she really noticed
+only one person.  Two young knights were among the new attendants of the
+Earl, but one of them Clarice could not have distinguished from the
+crowd.  The other had attracted her notice by coming forward to help the
+Countess from her litter, and, instead of attending his mistress
+further, had, rather to Clarice's surprise, turned to help _her_.  And
+when she looked up to thank him, it struck her that his face was like
+somebody she knew.  She did not discover who it was till Roisia
+observed, while the girls were undressing, that--"My cousin is growing a
+beard, I declare.  He had none the last time I saw him."
+
+"Which is thy cousin?" asked Clarice.
+
+"Why, Piers Ingham," said Roisia.  "He that helped my Lady from the
+litter."
+
+"Oh, is he thy cousin?" responded Clarice.
+
+"By the mother's side," answered Roisia.  "He hath but been knighted
+this last winter."
+
+"Then he is just ready for a wife," said Elaine.  "I wonder which of us
+it will be!  It is tolerably sure to be one.  I say, maids, I mean to
+have a jolly time of it while we are here!  It shall go hard with me if
+I do not get promoted to be one of the Queen's bower-women!"
+
+"Oh, would I?" interpolated Diana.
+
+"Why?" asked more than one voice.
+
+"I am sure," said Olympias, "I had ever so much rather be under the Lady
+Queen than our Lady."
+
+"Oh, that may be," said Diana.  "I was not looking at it in that light.
+There is some amusement in deceiving our Lady, and one doesn't feel it
+wrong, because she is such a vixen; but there would be no fun in taking
+in the Queen, she's too good."
+
+"I wonder what Father Bevis would say to that doctrine," demurely
+remarked Elaine.  "What it seems to mean is, that a lie is not such a
+bad thing if you tell it to a bad person as it would be if you told it
+to a good one.  Now I doubt if Father Bevis would be quite of that
+opinion."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," was Diana's reply.
+
+"Well, but is it nonsense?  Didst thou mean that?"
+
+It was rather unusual for Elaine thus to satirise Diana, and looked as
+if the two had changed characters, especially when Diana walked away,
+muttering something which no one distinctly heard.
+
+Elaine proved herself a tolerably true prophetess.  _Fete_ followed
+_fete_.  Clarice found herself initiated into Court circles, and
+discovered that she was enjoying herself very much.  But whether the
+attraction lay in the pageants, in the dancing, in her own bright array,
+or in the companionship, she did not pause to ask herself.  Perhaps if
+she had paused, and made the inquiry, she might have discovered that
+life had changed to her since she came to Westminster.  The things
+eternal, of which Heliet alone had spoken to her, had faded away into
+far distance; they had been left behind at Oakham.  The things temporal
+were becoming everything.
+
+In a stone balcony overhanging the Thames, at Whitehall, sat Earl Edmund
+of Cornwall, in a thoughtful attitude, resting his head upon his hand.
+He had been alone for half an hour, but now a tall man in a Dominican
+habit, who was not Father Bevis, came round the corner of the balcony,
+which ran all along that side of the house.  He was the Prior or Rector
+of Ashridge, a collegiate community, founded by the Earl himself, of
+which we shall hear more anon.
+
+The Friar sat down on the stone bench near the Earl, who took no further
+notice of him than by a look, his eyes returning to dreamy contemplation
+of the river.
+
+"Of what is my Lord thinking?" asked the Friar, gently.
+
+"Of life," said the Prince.
+
+"Not very hopefully, I imagine."
+
+"The hope comes at the beginning, Father.  Look at yonder pleasure-boat,
+with the lads and lasses in it, setting forth for a row.  There is hope
+enough in their faces.  But when the journey comes near its end, and the
+perilous bridge must be shot, and the night is setting in, what you see
+in the faces then will not be hope.  It will be weariness; perhaps
+disgust and sorrow.  And--in some voyages, the hope dies early."
+
+"True--if it has reference only to the day."
+
+"Ah," responded the Prince, with a smile which had more sadness than
+mirth in it, "you mean to point me to the hope beyond.  But the day is
+long Father.  The night has not come yet, and the bridge is still to be
+shot.  Ay, and the wind and rain are cold, as one drops slowly down the
+river."
+
+"There is home at the end, nevertheless," answered the Dominican.  "When
+we sit round the fire in the banquet hall, and all we love are round us,
+and the doors shut safe, we shall easily forget the cold wind on the
+water."
+
+"When!  Yes.  But I am on the water yet, and it may be some hours before
+my barge is moored at the garden steps.  And--it is always the same,
+Father.  It does seem strange, when there is only one earthly thing for
+which a man cares, that God should deny him that one thing.  Why rouse
+the hope which is never to be fulfilled?  If the width of the world had
+lain all our lives between me and my Lady, we should both have been
+happier.  Why should God bring us together to spoil each other's lives?
+For I dare say she is as little pleased with her lot as I with mine--
+poor Magot!"
+
+"Will my Lord allow me to alter the figure he has chosen?" said the
+Predicant Friar.  "Look at your own barge moored down below.  If the
+rope were to break, what would become of the barge?"
+
+"It would drift down the river."
+
+"And if there were in it a little child, alone, too young to have either
+skill or strength to steer it, what would become of him when the barge
+shot the bridge?"
+
+"Poor soul!--destruction, without question."
+
+"And what if my Lord be that little child, safe as yet in the barge
+which the Master has tied fast to the shore?  The rope is his trouble.
+What if it be his safety also?  He would like far better to go drifting
+down, amusing himself with the strange sights while daylight lasted; but
+when night came, and the bridge to be passed, how then?  Is it not
+better to be safe moored, though there be no beauty or variety in the
+scene?"
+
+"Nay, Father, but is there no third way?  Might the bridge not be passed
+in safety, and the child take his pleasure, and yet reach home well and
+sound?"
+
+"Some children," said the Predicant Friar, with a tender intonation.
+"But not that child."
+
+The Earl was silent.  The Prior softly repeated a text of Scripture.
+
+"Endure chastisement.  As sons God dealeth with you; what son then is
+he, whom the Father chasteneth not?"  [Hebrews 12, verse 7, Vulgate
+version.]
+
+A low, half-repressed sigh from his companion reminded the Prior that he
+was touching a sore place.  One of the Prince's bitterest griefs was his
+childlessness.  [He has told us so himself.] The Prior tacked about, and
+came into deeper water.
+
+"`Nor have we a High Priest who cannot sympathise with our infirmities,
+for He was tempted in all things like us, except in sinning.'" [Hebrews
+4, verse 15, Vulgate version.]
+
+"If one could see!" said the Earl, almost in a whisper.
+
+"It would be easier, without doubt.  Yet `blessed are they who see not,
+and believe.'  God can see.  I would rather He saw and not I, than--if
+such a thing were possible--that I saw and not He.  Whether is better,
+my Lord, that the father see the danger and guard the child without his
+knowing anything, or that the child see it too, and have all the pain
+and apprehension consequent upon the seeing?  The blind has the
+advantage, sometimes."
+
+"Yet who would wish to be blind on that account?" answered the Earl,
+quickly.
+
+"No man could wish it, nor need he.  Only, the blind man may take the
+comfort of it."
+
+"But you have not answered one point, Father.  Why does God rouse
+longings in our hearts which He never means to fulfil?"
+
+"Does God rouse them?"
+
+"Are they sin, then?"
+
+"No," answered the Prior, slowly, as if he were thinking out the
+question, and had barely reached the answer.  "I dare not say that.
+They are nature.  Some, I know, would have all that is nature to be sin;
+but I doubt if God treats it thus in His Word.  Still, I question if He
+raises those longings.  He allows them.  Man raises them."
+
+"Does He never guide them?"
+
+"Yes, that I think He does."
+
+"Then the question comes to the same thing.  Why does God not guide us
+to long for the thing that He means to give us?"
+
+"He very often does."
+
+"Then," pursued the Earl, a little impatiently, "why does He not turn us
+away from that which He does not intend us to have?"
+
+"My Lord," said the Predicant, gravely, "from the day of his fall, man
+has always been asking God _why_.  He will probably go on doing it to
+the day of the dissolution of all things.  But I do not observe that God
+has ever yet answered the question."
+
+"It is wrong to ask it, then, I suppose," said the Earl, with a weary
+sigh.
+
+"It is not faith that wants to know why.  `He that believeth hasteneth
+not.'  [Isaiah 28, verse 16, Vulgate version.] `What I do, thou knowest
+not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.'  [John 13 verse 7.] We can
+afford to wait, my Lord."
+
+"Easily enough," replied the Earl, with feeling, "if we knew it would
+come right in the end."
+
+"It will come as He would have it who laid down His life that you should
+live for ever.  Is that not enough for my Lord?"
+
+Perhaps the Prince felt it enough.  At all events, he gave no answer.
+
+"Well, that is not my notion of going comfortably through life!"
+observed Miss Elaine Criketot, in a decided tone.  "My idea is to pull
+all the plums out of the cake, and leave the hard crusts for those that
+like them."
+
+"Does anybody like them?" laughingly asked Clarice.
+
+"Well, for those who need them, then.  Plenty of folks in this world are
+glad of hard crusts or anything else."
+
+"Thy metaphor is becoming rather confused," observed Diana.
+
+"Dost thou not think, Elaine Criketot, that it might be only fair to
+leave a few plums for those whose usual fare is crusts?  A crust now and
+then would scarcely hurt the dainty damsels who commonly regale
+themselves on plums."
+
+It was a fourth voice which said this--a voice which nobody expected,
+and the sound of which brought all the girls to their feet in an
+instant.
+
+"Most certainly, Lord Earl," replied Elaine, courtesying low; "but I
+hope they would be somebody else's plums than mine."
+
+"I see," said the Earl, with that sparkle of fun in his eyes, which they
+all knew.  "Self-denial is a holy and virtuous quality, to be cultivated
+by all men--except me.  Well, we might all subscribe that creed with
+little sacrifice.  But then where would be the self-denial?"
+
+"Please it the Lord Earl, it might be practised by those who liked it."
+
+"I should be happy to hear of any one who liked self-denial," responded
+the Earl, laughing.  "Is that not a contradiction in terms?"
+
+Elaine was about to make a half-saucy answer, mixed sufficiently with
+reverence to take away any appearance of offence, when a sight met her
+eyes which struck her into silent horror.  In the doorway, looking a
+shade more acetous than usual, stood Lady Margaret.  It was well known
+to all the bower-maidens of the Countess of Cornwall that there were two
+crimes on her code which were treated as capital offences.  Laughing was
+the less, and being caught in conversation with a man was the greater.
+But beneath both these depths was a deeper depth yet, and this was
+talking to the Earl.  Never was a more perfect exemplification of the
+dog in the manger than the Lady Margaret of Cornwall.  She did not want
+the Earl for herself, but she was absolutely determined that no one else
+should so much as speak to him.  Here was Elaine, caught red-handed in
+the commission of all three of these stupendous crimes.  And if the
+offence could be made worse, it was so by the Earl saying, as he walked
+away, "I pray you, my Lady, visit not my sins on this young maid."
+
+Had one compassionate sensation remained in the mind of the Countess
+towards Elaine, that unlucky speech would have extinguished it at once.
+She did not, as usual, condescend to answer her lord; but she turned to
+Elaine, and in a voice of concentrated anger, demanded the repetition of
+every word which had passed.  Diana gave it, for Elaine seemed almost
+paralysed with terror.  Clarice, on the demand of her mistress,
+confirmed Diana's report as exact.  The Countess turned back to Elaine.
+Her words were scarcely to be reported, for she lost alike her temper
+and her gentlewomanly manners.  "And out of my house thou goest this
+day," was the conclusion, "thou shameful, giglot hussey!  And I will not
+give thee an husband; thou shalt go back to thy father and thy mother,
+with the best whipping that ever I gave maid.  And she that shall be in
+thy stead shall be the ugliest maid I can find, and still of tongue, and
+sober of behaviour.  Now, get thee gone!"
+
+And calling for Agatha as she went, the irate lady stalked away.
+
+Of no use was poor Elaine's flood of tears, nor the united entreaties of
+her four companions.  Clarice and Diana soon found that they were not to
+come off scatheless.  Neither had spoken to the Earl, as Elaine readily
+confessed; but for the offence of listening to such treachery, both were
+sent to bed by daylight, with bread and water for supper.  The offences
+of grown-up girls in those days were punished like those of little
+children now.  All took tearful farewells of poor Elaine, who dolefully
+expressed her fear of another whipping when she reached home; and so she
+passed out of their life.
+
+It was several weeks before the new bower-maiden appeared.  Diana
+suggested that the Countess found some difficulty in meeting with a girl
+ugly enough to please her.  But, at last, one evening in November,
+Mistress Underdone introduced the new-comer, in the person of a girl of
+eighteen, or thereabouts, as Felicia de Fay, daughter of Sir Stephen de
+Fay and Dame Sabina Watefeud, of the county of Sussex.  All the rest
+looked with much curiosity at her.
+
+Felicia, while not absolutely ugly, was undeniably plain.  Diana
+remarked afterwards to Clarice that there were no ugly girls to be had,
+as plainly appeared.  But the one thing about her which really was ugly
+was her expression.  She looked no one in the face, while she diligently
+studied every one who was not looking at her.  Let any one attempt to
+meet her eyes, and they dropped in a moment.  Some do this from mere
+bashfulness, but Felicia showed no bashfulness in any other way.
+Clarice's feeling towards her was fear.
+
+"I'm not afraid!" said Diana.  "I am sure I could be her match in fair
+fight!"
+
+"It is the fair fight I doubt," said Clarice.  "I am afraid there is
+treachery in her eyes."
+
+"She makes me creep all over," added Olympias.
+
+"Well, she had better not try to measure swords with me," said Diana.
+"I tell you, I have a presentiment that girl and I shall fight; but I
+will come off victor; you see if I don't!"
+
+Clarice made no answer, but in her heart she thought that Diana was too
+honest to be any match for Felicia.
+
+It was the Countess's custom to spend her afternoon, when the day was
+fine, in visiting some shrine or abbey.  When the day was not fine, she
+passed the time in embroidering among her maidens, and woe betide the
+unlucky damsel who selected a wrong shade, or set in a false stitch.
+The natural result of this was that the pine-cone, kept by Olympias as a
+private barometer, was anxiously consulted on the least appearance of
+clouds.  Diana asserted that she offered a wax candle to Saint Wulstan
+every month for fair weather.  One of the young ladies always had to
+accompany her mistress, and the fervent hope of each was to escape this
+promotion.  Felicia alone never expressed this hope, never joined in any
+tirades against the Countess, never got into disgrace with her, and
+seemed to stand alone, like a drop of vinegar which would not mingle
+with the oil around it.  She appeared to see everything, and say
+nothing.  It was impossible to get at her likes and dislikes.  She took
+everything exactly alike.  Either she had no prejudices, or she was all
+prejudice, and nobody could tell which it was.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  Some readers will think such ideas too modern to have occurred
+to any one in 1290.  There is evidence to the contrary.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+BUILDING A FRESH CASTLE.
+
+  "Oh, had I wist, afore I kissed,
+  That loue had been sae ill to win,
+  I'd locked my heart wi' a key o' gowd,
+  And pinned it wi' a siller pin."--_Old Ballad_.
+
+On an afternoon early in December, the Countess sat among her
+bower-women at work.  Roisia was almost in tears, for she had just been
+sharply chidden for choosing too pale a shade of blue.  A little stir at
+the door made all look up, and they saw Father Bevis.  All rose to their
+feet in an instant, the Countess dropping on her knees, and entreating
+the priest's blessing.  He gave it, but as if his thoughts were far
+away.
+
+"Lady, my Lord hath sent me to you with tidings.  May God grant they be
+not the worst tidings for England that we have heard for many a day!  A
+messenger is come from the North, bringing news that the Lady Alianora
+the Queen lieth dead in the marsh lands of Lincolnshire."
+
+It was a worse loss to England than any there knew.  Yet they knew
+enough to draw a cry of horror and sorrow from the lips of all those
+that heard the news.  And a fortnight later, on the 17th of December,
+they all stood at Charing Cross, to see the funeral procession wind down
+from the north road, and set down the black bier for its last momentary
+rest on the way to Westminster.
+
+It is rather singular that the two items which alone the general reader
+usually remembers of this good Queen's history should be two points
+distinctly proved by research to be untrue.  Leonor did not suck the
+poison from her husband's arm--a statement never made until a hundred
+and fifty years after her death, and virtually disproved by the
+testimony of an eye-witness who makes no allusion to it, but who tells
+us instead that she behaved like a very weak woman instead of a very
+brave one, giving way to hysterical screams, and so distressing the
+sufferer that he bade four of his knights to carry her out of the room.
+Again, Edward's affectionate regret did not cause the erection of the
+famous Eleanor Crosses wherever the bier rested on its journey.  Leonor
+herself desired their erection, and left money for it in her will.
+
+The domestic peace of the royal house died with her who had stood at its
+head for nineteen years.  To her son, above all others, her loss was
+simply irreparable.  The father and son were men of very different
+tastes and proclivities; and the former never understood the latter.  In
+fact, Edward the Second was a man who did not belong to his century; and
+such men always have a hard lot.  His love of quiet, and hatred of war,
+were, in the eyes of his father, spiritless meanness; while his musical
+tastes and his love of animals went beyond womanish weakness, and were
+looked upon as absolute vices.  But perhaps to the nobles the worst
+features of his character were two which, in the nineteenth century,
+would entitle him to respect.  He was extremely faithful in friendship,
+and he had a strong impatience of etiquette.  He loved to associate with
+his people, to mix in their joys and sorrows, to be as one of them.  His
+favourite amusement was to row down the Thames on a summer evening, with
+music on board, and to chat freely with the lieges who came down in
+their barges, occasionally, and much to his own amusement, buying
+cabbages and other wares from them.  We should consider such actions
+indicative of a kindly disposition and of simplicity of taste.  But in
+the eyes of his contemporaries they were inexpressibly low.  And be it
+remembered that it was not a question of associating with persons of
+more or less education, whose mental standard might be unequal to his
+own.  There was no mental standard whereby to measure any one in the
+thirteenth century.  All (with a very few exceptions, and those chiefly
+among the clergy) were uneducated alike.  The moral standard looked upon
+war and politics as the only occupations meet for a prince, and upon
+hunting and falconry as the only amusements sufficiently noble.  A man
+who, like Edward, hated war, and had no fancy for either sport or
+politics, was hardly a man in the eyes of a mediaeval noble.
+
+The hardest treatment to which Edward was subjected, whether from his
+father in youth or from his people at a later time, arose out of that
+touching constancy which was his greatest virtue.  Perhaps he did not
+always choose his friends well; he was inclined to put rather too much
+trust in his fellow creatures; and Hugh Le Despenser the elder may have
+been grasping and mean, and Piers Gavestone too extravagant.  Yet we
+must remember that we read their characters only as depicted by the pens
+of men who hated them--of men who were simply unable to conceive that
+two persons might be drawn together by mutual taste for some elevated
+and innocent pursuit.  The most wicked motives imaginable were
+recklessly suggested for the attachment which Edward showed for these
+chosen friends--who were not of noble origin, and had no handles to
+their names till he conferred them.
+
+It is only through a thick mist of ignorance and prejudice that we of
+this day can see the character of Edward the Second.  We read it only in
+the pages of monks who hated their Lollard King--in the angry complaints
+of nobles who were jealous that he listened to and bestowed gifts on
+other men than themselves.  But we do see some faint glimpses of the
+Edward that really was, in the letter-book but recently dug out of a
+mass of State papers; in the pages of De La Moor, [Note 1], the only
+chronicler of his deeds who did not hate him, and who, as his personal
+attendant, must have known more of him in a month than the monks could
+have learned in a century; and last, not least, in that touching Latin
+poem in which, during the sad captivity which preceded his sadder death,
+he poured out his soul to God, the only Friend whom he had left in all
+the universe.
+
+  "Oh, who that heard how once they praised my name,
+  Could think that from those tongues these slanders came?
+  ...  I see Thy rod, and, Lord, I am content.
+  Weave Thou my life until the web is spun;
+  Chide me, O Father, till Thy will be done:
+  Thy child no longer murmurs to obey;
+  He only sorrows o'er the past delay.
+  Lost is my realm; yet I shall not repine,
+  If, after all, I win but that of Thine."
+
+  [See Note 2.]
+
+To a character such as this, the loss of his chief friend and only
+reliable intercessor, when just emerging from infancy into boyhood, was
+a loss for which nothing could atone.  It proved itself so in those
+dreary after-years of perpetual misunderstandings and severities on the
+part of his father, who set him no good example, and yet looked on the
+son whose tastes were purer than his own as an instance of irredeemable
+depravity.  The easiest thing in the world to do is one against which
+God has denounced a woe--to put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.
+
+Another item of sorrowful news reached London with the coffin of Queen
+Leonor.  It was the death of the baby Queen of Scotland, by whose
+betrothal to Prince Edward the King had vainly hoped to fuse the
+northern and southern kingdoms into one.  It left Scotland in a
+condition of utter distraction, with no less than eleven different
+claimants for the Crown, setting up claims good, bad, and indifferent;
+but every one of them persuaded that all the others had not an inch of
+ground to stand on, and that he was the sole true and rightful
+inheritor.
+
+The only claimants who really had a shadow of right may be reduced to
+three.  If the old primitive custom of Scotland was to be regarded--a
+custom dear to all Celtic nations--by which illegitimate children were
+considered to have an equal right to the succession with the legitimate
+ones, then there could be no question that the heir was Patrick de
+Galithlys, son of Henry, the natural son of Alexander the Second.  But
+if not--and in this respect undoubtedly the custom had become obsolete--
+the struggle rested between John Baliol and Robert Bruce, of whom the
+first was the son of Dervorgoyl, daughter of Margaret, eldest daughter
+of David Earl of Huntingdon, brother of King William the Lion; while the
+latter was the son of Isabel, the second daughter of David.  Every
+reader knows that the question was submitted by consent of the Scottish
+nobles to Edward the First as arbitrator, and that he gave his decision
+in favour of Baliol.  In other words, he gave it against the existing
+law both of England and Scotland, which did not recognise
+representation, and according to which the son of the second sister
+ought to have been preferred to the grandson of the elder.
+
+The anxiety of our kings to bring in this law of representation is a
+curious psychological fact.  Richard the First tried to do it by will,
+in leaving the crown to his nephew Arthur; but the law was too strong
+for him, and the rightful heir succeeded--his brother John.  Edward the
+First contrived to abrogate the law, so far as Scotland was concerned, a
+hundred years later.  And eighty years after him Edward the Third tried
+again to alter the English law of succession, and this time the
+experiment succeeded.  But its success was due mainly to two reasons--
+the personal popularity of the dead Prince whose son was thus lifted
+into the line of succession, while the rightful heir was extremely
+unpopular; and the fact that the disinherited heir gave full consent and
+assistance to the change in the law.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The knights and squires of the Earl of Cornwall's household were
+gathered together on the balcony which faced the river.  One only was
+absent, Piers Ingham, who was occupied in a more interesting manner, as
+will presently be seen.  His colleague, Sir Lambert Aylmer, was holding
+forth in a lively manner for the benefit of the four squires, who were
+listening to him with various degrees of attention.  Reginald de
+Echingham could never spare much of that quality from his admirable
+self, and De Chaucombe was an original thinker, who did not purchase
+ready-made ideas from other people.  Barkeworth invariably agreed with
+the last speaker in public, but kept his private views an inscrutable
+mystery; while all that could be said of Gernet's notions was that he
+had "_un grand talent pour le silence_."
+
+To this quartette Sir Lambert was explaining his forecast of the
+political weather.  The young knight had a great fancy for airing his
+politics, and an unwavering conviction of the infallibility of his
+judgment.  If Sir Lambert was to be believed, what King Edward would
+undoubtedly do was to foment civil war in Scotland, until all the rival
+male claimants had destroyed each other.  He would then marry the
+daughter of one of them, and annex Scotland as her appanage.  All being
+smooth in that quarter, the King would next undertake a pilgrimage to
+Palestine, drive the Saracens out, and confer that country on one of his
+sons-in-law.  He would then carry fire and sword through Borussia,
+Lithuania, and other heathen kingdoms in the north, subdue them all, put
+a few more sons-in-law in possession as tributary governors, and being
+by that time an old man, would then return to Westminster to end his
+days in peace, a new Alexander, and to leave a magnificent empire to his
+son.
+
+"Easier said than done," growled De Chaucombe, in his beard.
+
+"Charming!" observed De Echingham, caressing his pet moustache.
+
+"A lovely prospect, indeed," said De Barkeworth, with a bow, in a tone
+so impartially suspended between conviction and cynicism that nobody
+could tell which had dictated it.  "I should like to win my spurs in
+Lithuania."
+
+"Win thy spurs!" muttered De Chaucombe again.  "There are no spurs for
+carpet-knights [Note 3] in the wardrobe of the Future."
+
+"I think knights should have golden spurs, not gilt ones--don't you?"
+inquired De Echingham.
+
+"Puppy!" sneered De Chaucombe.  "If ever either are on thy heels it will
+be a blunder of somebody's making."
+
+"Is it necessary to quarrel?" asked Gernet, speaking for the first time.
+
+"Oh, I trust I have more generosity than to quarrel with _him_," rather
+contemptuously returned De Echingham, who, as every one present knew,
+had as little physical courage as any girl.
+
+"Make thyself easy," was the answer of De Chaucombe, as he walked away.
+"I should not think of running the risk."
+
+"What risk?" demanded Barkeworth, laughing.  De Chaucombe looked back
+over his shoulder, and discharged a Parthian dart.
+
+"The risk of turning my good Damascus blade on a toad," said he, to the
+great amusement of Barkeworth.
+
+De Chaucombe went to the end of the balcony, descended the steps which
+led to the ground floor, and came on a second terrace, also fronting the
+river.  As he turned a corner of the house he suddenly confronted two
+people, who were walking slowly along the terrace, and conversing in
+hushed tones.  Sir Piers Ingham was evidently and deeply interested, his
+head slightly bowed towards Clarice who was as earnestly engaged in the
+dissection of one of the _few_ leaves which Christmas had left
+fluttering on the garden bushes.  As De Chaucombe approached she looked
+up with a startled air, and blushed to her eyes.
+
+De Chaucombe muttered something indistinct which might pass for "Good
+evening," and resumed his path rather more rapidly than before.
+
+"So the wind blows from that direction!" he said to himself.  "Well, it
+does not matter a straw to me.  But what our amiable mistress will say
+to the fair Clarice, when she comes to know of it, is another question.
+I do believe that, if she had made up her mind to a match between them,
+she would undo it again, if she thought they wished it.  It would be
+just like her."
+
+It had never occurred to Clarice to suppose that she did anything wrong
+in thus disobeying point blank the known orders of her mistress that the
+bower-maidens were to hold no intercourse whatever with the gentlemen of
+the household.  She knew perfectly well that if the Countess saw her
+talking to Sir Piers, she would be exceedingly angry; and she knew that
+her parents fully intended and expected her to obey her mistress as she
+would themselves.  Poor Clarice's code of morals looked upon discovery,
+not disobedience, as the thing to be dreaded; and while she would have
+recoiled with horror from the thought of unfaithfulness to her beloved,
+she looked with absolute complacency on the idea of disloyalty to the
+mistress whom she by no means loved.  How could she do otherwise when
+she had never been taught better?
+
+Clarice's standard was _loyaute d'amour_.  It is the natural standard of
+all men, the only difference being in the king whom they set up.  A vast
+number are loyal to themselves only, for it is themselves whom alone
+they love.  Fewer are loyal to some human being; and poor humanity being
+a very fallible thing, they often make sad shipwreck.  Very few indeed--
+in comparison of the mass--are loyal to the King who claims and has a
+right to their hearts' best affections.  And Clarice was not one of
+these.
+
+Inside the house the Countess and Mistress Underdone were very busy
+indeed.  Before them, spread over forms and screens, lay piles of
+material for clothing--linen, serge, silk, and crape, of many colours.
+On a leaf-table at the side of the room a number of gold and silver
+ornaments were displayed.  Furs were heaped upon the bed, boots and
+loose slippers stood in a row in one corner; while Mistress Underdone
+was turning over for her mistress's inspection a quantity of embroidered
+neckerchiefs.
+
+"Now, let me see," said the Countess, peremptorily.  "Measure off linen
+for four gowns, Agatha--two of brown and two of red.  Serge for two--the
+dark green.  One silk will be enough, and one of crape."
+
+"How many ells the gown does my Lady choose to allow?" asked Mistress
+Underdone, taking an ell-wand from the table.
+
+"Four," said the Countess, curtly.  This was rather miserly measure,
+four ells and a third being the usual reckoning; but Mistress Underdone
+measured and cut in silence.
+
+"Thou mayest allow a third more for the silk and crape," said the
+Countess, in a fit of unusual generosity.
+
+Mistress Underdone finished her measuring, laying each piece of material
+neatly folded on the last, until the table held a tall heap of them.
+
+"Now for hoods," pursued the Countess.  "Black cloth for two, lined with
+cats' fur; russet for two more.  Capes for outdoor wear--two of the
+green serge; one of black cloth lined with cats' fur; one of silk.  Four
+linen wimples; two pairs of cloth boots, two of slippers; two corsets;
+three of those broidered kerchiefs, one better than the others; four
+pairs of hosen.  Measure off also twenty-four ells of linen cloth."
+
+"Of what price, if it please my Lady?"
+
+"Fivepence the ell.  And the boots of sixpence a pair.  What did that
+green serge cost?"
+
+"Threepence the ell, my Lady."
+
+"That is monstrous.  Have I no cheaper?  Twopence would be good enough
+for her."
+
+"If it please my Lady, there is only that coarse grey serge at three
+halfpence the ell, which was bought for the cook-maids."
+
+"Humph!  I suppose that would scarcely do," said the Countess, in a tone
+which sounded as if she wished it would.  "Well, then--those ornaments.
+She must have a silver fibula, I suppose; and a copper-gilt one for
+common.  What made thee put out all those other things?  That is enough
+for her.  If she wants a silver chain, her husband must give it her; I
+shall not.  As to rings and necklaces, they are all nonsense--not fit
+for such as she."
+
+"Would my Lady think proper to allow a dovecote with silver pins?"
+
+The dovecote was a head-dress, a kind of round caul of gold or silver
+network, secured by gold or silver pins fastened in the hair.
+
+"Not I.  Let her husband give her such fooleries."
+
+"And may I request to know what my Lady allows for making the garments?"
+
+"Three halfpence each."
+
+"Might I be pardoned if I remind my Lady that the usual price is
+twopence each?"
+
+"For me, perhaps; not for her."
+
+Mistress Underdone went on measuring the linen in silence.
+
+"There, that finishes for Clarice," said the Countess.  "Now for Diana.
+She may have a silver chain in addition, two of the best kerchiefs,
+and--no, that is enough.  Otherwise let her have just the same."
+
+"If my Lady would graciously indulge her servant with permission to ask
+it, do the maidens know yet what is to befall them?"
+
+"No.  I shall tell them on Sunday.  Time enough."
+
+And the Countess left Mistress Underdone to finish the work by herself.
+
+"On Sunday!  Only two days beforehand!" said Agatha Underdone to
+herself.  "Diana will stand it.  She is one that would not care much for
+anything of that kind, and she will rule the house.  But Clarice!  If
+she should have given her heart elsewhere!--and I have fancied, lately,
+that she has given it somewhere.  That poor child!"
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+"But how can we?" queried Clarice.  "If I were to speak to the Lady--
+even if I dared--I doubt--"
+
+"I do not doubt, sweetheart," replied Sir Piers.  "No, the path must be
+rather mere winding than that, though I confess I hate tortuous paths.
+Father Miles is the only person who has any influence with the Lady, and
+Father Bevis is the only one who has any with him."
+
+"But Father Bevis would have no sympathy with a love-story."
+
+"I am not sure that he would.  But my Lord will, I know; and Father
+Bevis will listen to him.  Leave this business to me, my fair Clarice.
+If I can obtain my Lord's ear this evening after vespers, and I think I
+can, we shall soon have matters in train; and I have a fine hawk for
+Father Miles, which will put him in a good humour.  Now, farewell, for I
+hear the Lady's voice within."
+
+The lovers parted hastily, and Clarice went in to attire herself for
+mass.  For any one of her maidens to be absent from that ceremony would
+have been a terrible offence in the eyes of the Countess; nor would any
+less excuse than serious illness have availed to avert her displeasure.
+Dinner followed mass, and a visit to the shrine of Saint Edward,
+concluded by vespers, occupied the remainder of the afternoon.  There
+was half an hour to spare before supper, and the girls were chatting
+together in their usual "bower," or boudoir, when, to their surprise,
+the Countess entered.
+
+"I have ado but with two of you," she said, as she seated herself.
+
+Naturally, the girls supposed that some penalty was about to befall
+those two.  How had they offended her? and which of them were the
+offenders?  To displease the Countess, as they all knew, was so
+extremely easy, that not one of them was prepared for the next sentence.
+
+"Two of you are to be wed on Tuesday."
+
+This was a bombshell.  And it was the more serious because they were
+aware that from this sentence there was no appeal.  Troubled eyes, set
+in white faces, hurriedly sought each other.
+
+Was it from sheer thoughtlessness, or from absolute malice, or even from
+a momentary feeling of compassion towards the two who were to be
+sacrificed, that the Countess made a long pause after each sentence?
+
+"Diana Quappelad," she said.
+
+Olympias, Roisia, and Clarice drew a sigh of relief.  There were just
+half the chances against each that there had been.  Diana stood forward,
+with a slight flush, but apparently not much concerned.
+
+"Thou art to wed with Master Fulk de Chaucombe, and thy bridegroom will
+be knighted on the wedding-day.  I shall give thee thy gear and thy
+wedding-feast.  Mistress Underdone will show thee the gear."
+
+The first momentary expression of Diana's face had been disappointment.
+It passed in an instant, and one succeeded which was divided between
+pleasurable excitement and amusement.  She courtesied very low, and
+thanked the Countess, as of course was expected of her.
+
+Roisia stood behind, with blank face and clasped hands.  There might be
+further pain in store, but pleasure for her there could now be none.
+The Countess quite understood the dumb show, but she made no sign.
+
+"Clarice La Theyn."
+
+The girl stood out, listening for the next words as though her life hung
+on them.
+
+"I shall also give thee thy gear, and thy squire will be knighted on the
+wedding-day."
+
+The Countess was turning away as though she had said all.  Clarice had
+heard enough to make her feel as if life were not worth having.  A
+squire who still required knighthood was not Piers Ingham.  Did it
+matter who else it was?  But she found, the next moment, that it might.
+
+"Would my Lady suffer me to let Clarice know whom she is to wed?" gently
+suggested Mistress Underdone.
+
+"Oh, did I not mention it?" carelessly responded the Countess, turning
+back to Clarice.  "Vivian Barkeworth."
+
+She paused an instant for the courtesy and thanks which she expected.
+But she got a good deal more than she expected.  With a passionate sob
+that came from her very heart, Clarice fell at the feet of the Lady
+Margaret.
+
+"What is all this fuss about?" exclaimed her displeased mistress.  "I
+never heard such ado about nothing."
+
+Her displeasure, usually feared above all things, was nothing to Clarice
+in that terrible instant.  She sobbed forth that she loved elsewhere--
+she was already troth-plight.
+
+"Nonsense!" said the Countess, sharply.  "What business hadst thou with
+such foolery, unknown to me?  All maidens are wed by orders from their
+superiors.  Why shouldst thou be an exception?"
+
+"Oh, have you no compassion?" cried poor Clarice, in her agony.  "Lady,
+did you never love?"
+
+All present were intently watching the face of the Countess, in the hope
+of seeing some sign of relenting.  But when this question was asked, the
+stern lips grew more set and stern than ever, and something like fire
+flashed out of the usually cold blue-grey eyes.
+
+"Who--I?" she exclaimed.  "Thanks be to all the saints right verily,
+nay.  I never had ado with any such disgraceful folly.  From mine
+earliest years I have ever desired to be an holy sister, and never to
+see a man's face.  Get up, girl; it is of no use to kneel to me.  There
+was no kindness shown to me; my wishes were never considered; why should
+thine be?  I was made to array myself for my bridal, to the very
+uprooting and destruction of all that I most loved and desired.  Ah! if
+my Lord and father had lived, it would not have been so; he always
+encouraged my vocation.  He said love was unhappy, and I thought it was
+scandalous.  No, Clarice; I have no compassion upon lovers.  There never
+ought to be any such thing.  Let it be as I have said."
+
+And away stalked the Countess, looking more grey, square, and angular
+than ever.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  De La Moor is the only chronicler in whose pages it is possible
+to recognise the Edward of the letter-book, in which all his letters are
+copied for the thirty-third year of his father's reign--1304-5.
+
+Note 2.  Barnes's Edward the Third.  I must in honesty confess that I
+have taken the liberty of smoothing Dr Barnes's somewhat rugged
+translation.
+
+Note 3.  A carpet-knight was one whose heroism lay more in rhetorical
+visions addressed to his partner in the intervals of dancing than in
+hard blows given and taken in the field.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+DESTROYED BY THE HURRICANE.
+
+  "Our plans may be disjointed,
+  But we may calmly rest:
+  What God has once appointed
+  Is better than our best."--Frances Ridley Havergal.
+
+The Countess left Clarice prostrate on the ground, sobbing as if her
+heart would break--Olympias feebly trying to raise and soothe her,
+Roisia looking half-stunned, and Felicia palpably amused by the scene.
+
+"Thou hadst better get up, child," said Diana, in a tone divided between
+constraint and pity.  "It will do thee no good to lie there.  We shall
+all have to put up with the same thing in our turn.  I haven't got the
+man I should have chosen; but I suppose it won't matter a hundred years
+hence."
+
+"I am not so sure of that," said Roisia, in a low voice.
+
+"Oh, thou art disappointed, I know," said Diana.  "I would hand Fulk
+over to thee with pleasure, if I could.  I don't want him.  But I
+suppose he will do as well as another, and I shall take care to be
+mistress.  It is something to be married--to anybody."
+
+"It is everything to be married to the right man," said Roisia; "but it
+is something very awful to be married to the wrong one."
+
+"Oh, one soon gets over that," was Diana's answer.  "So long as you can
+have your own way, I don't see that anything signifies much.  I shall
+not admire myself in my wedding-dress any the less because my squire is
+not exactly the one I hoped it might be."
+
+"Diana, I don't understand thee," responded Roisia.  "What does it
+matter, I should say, having thine own way in little nothings so long as
+thou art not to have it in the one thing for which thou really carest?
+Thou dost not mean to say that a velvet gown would console thee for
+breaking thy heart?"
+
+"But I do," said Diana.  "I must be a countess before I could wear
+velvet; and I would marry any man in the world who would make me a
+countess."
+
+Mistress Underdone, who had lifted up Clarice, and was holding her in
+her arms, petting her into calmness as she would a baby, now thought fit
+to interpose.
+
+"My maids," she said, "there are women who have lost their hearts, and
+there are women who were born without any.  The former case has the more
+suffering, yet methinks the latter is really the more pitiable."
+
+"Well, I think those people pitiable enough who let their hearts break
+their sleep and interfere with their appetites," replied Diana.  "I have
+got over my disappointment already; and Clarice will be a simpleton if
+she do not."
+
+"I expect Clarice and I will be simpletons," said Roisia, quietly.
+
+"Please yourselves, and I will please myself," answered Diana.  "Now,
+mistress, Clarice seems to have given over crying for a few seconds; may
+we see the gear?"
+
+"Oh, I want Father Bevis!" sobbed Clarice, with a fresh gush of tears.
+
+"Ay, my dove, thou wilt be the better of shriving," said Mistress
+Underdone, tenderly.  "Sit thee down a moment, and I will see to Father
+Bevis.  Wait awhile, Diana."
+
+It was not many minutes before she came back with Father Bevis, who took
+Clarice into his oratory; and as it was a long while before she rejoined
+them, the others--Roisia excepted--had almost time to forget the scene
+they had witnessed, in the interest of turning over Diana's _trousseau_,
+and watching her try on hoods and mantles.
+
+The interview with Father Bevis was unsatisfactory to Clarice.  She
+wanted comfort, and he gave her none.  Advice he was ready with in
+plenty; but comfort he could not give her, because he could not see why
+she wanted it.  He was simply incapable of understanding her.  He was
+very kind, and very anxious to comfort her, if he could only have told
+how to do it.  But love--spiritual love excepted--was a stranger to his
+bosom.  No one had ever loved him; he could not remember his parents; he
+had never had brother nor sister; and he had never made a friend.  His
+heart was there, but it had never been warmed to life.  Perhaps he came
+nearest to loving the Earl his master; but even this feeling awakened
+very faint pulsations.  His capacity for loving human beings had been
+simply starved to death.  Such a man as this, however anxious to be kind
+and helpful, of course could not enter in the least into the position of
+Clarice.  He told her many very true things, if she had been capable of
+receiving them; he tried his very best to help her; but she felt through
+it all that they were barbarians to each other, and that Father Bevis
+regarded her as partially incomprehensible and wholly silly.
+
+Father Bevis told Clarice that the chief end of man was to glorify God,
+and to enjoy Him for ever; that no love was worthy in comparison with
+His; that he who loved father and mother more than Christ was not worthy
+of Him.  All very true, but the stunned brain and lacerated heart could
+not take it in.  The drugs were pure and precious, but they were not the
+medicine for her complaint.  She only felt a sensation of repulsion.
+
+Clarice did not know that the Earl was doing his very best to rescue
+her.  He insisted on Father Miles going to the Countess about it; nay,
+he even ventured an appeal to her himself, though it always cost him
+great pain to attempt a conversation with this beloved but irresponsive
+woman.  But he took nothing by his motion.  The Countess was as
+obstinate as she was absolute.  If anything, the opposition to her will
+left her just a shade more determined.  In vain her husband pleaded
+earnestly with her not to spoil two lives.  Hers had been spoiled, she
+replied candidly: these ought not to be better off, nor should they be.
+
+"Life has been spoiled for us both," said the Earl, sadly; "but I should
+have thought that a reason why we might have been tenderer to others."
+
+"You are a fool!" said the Countess with a flash of angry scorn.
+
+They were the first words she had spoken to him for eighteen years.
+
+"Maybe, my Lady," was the gentle answer.  "It would cost me less to be
+accounted a fool than it would to break a heart."
+
+And he left her, feeling himself baffled and his endeavours useless, yet
+with a glow at his heart notwithstanding.  His Margaret had spoken to
+him at last.  That her words were angry, even abusive, was a
+consideration lost in the larger fact.  Tears which did not fall welled
+up from the soft heart to the dove-like eyes, and he went out to the
+terrace to compose himself.  "O Margaret, Margaret! if you could have
+loved me!"  He never thought of blaming her--only of winning her as a
+dim hope of some happy future, to be realised when it was God's will.
+He had never yet dared to look his cross in the face sufficiently to
+add, if it were God's will.
+
+When the Monday came, which was to be the last day of Clarice's maiden
+life, it proved a busy, bustling day, with no time for thought until the
+evening.  Clarice lived through it as best she might.  Diana seemed to
+have put her disappointment completely behind her, and to be thoroughly
+consoled by the bustle and her _trousseau_.
+
+One consideration never occurred to any of the parties concerned, which
+would be thought rather desirable in the nineteenth century.  This was,
+that the respective bridegrooms should have any interview with their
+brides elect, or in the slightest degree endeavour to make themselves
+agreeable.  They met at meals in the great hall, but they never
+exchanged a word.  Clarice did not dare to lift her eyes, lest she
+should meet those either of Vivian or Piers.  She kept them diligently
+fixed upon her trencher, with which she did little else than look at it.
+
+The evening brought a lull in the excitement and busy labour.  The
+Countess, attended by Felicia, had gone to the Palace on royal
+invitation.  Clarice sat on the terrace, her eyes fixed on the river
+which she did not see, her hands lying listlessly in her lap.  Though
+she had heard nothing, that unaccountable conviction of another
+presence, which comes to us all at times, seized upon her; and she
+looked up to see Piers Ingham.
+
+The interview was long, and there is no need to add that it was painful.
+The end came at last.
+
+"Wilt thou forget me, Clarice?" softly asked Piers.
+
+"I ought," was the answer, with a gush of tears, "if I can."
+
+"I cannot," was the reply.  "But one pain I can spare thee, my beloved.
+The Lady means to retain thee in her service as damsel of the chamber."
+[Note 1.]
+
+If Clarice could have felt any lesser grief beside the one great one,
+she would have been sorry to hear that.
+
+"I shall retire," said Sir Piers, "from my Lord's household.  I will not
+give thee the misery of meeting me day by day.  Rather I will do what I
+can to help thee to forget me.  It is the easier for me, since I have
+had to offend my Lady by declining the hand of Felicia de Fay, which she
+was pleased to offer me."
+
+"The Lady offered Felicia to thee?"
+
+Sir Piers bent his head in assent.  Clarice felt as if she could have
+poisoned Felicia, and have given what arsenic remained over to the Lady
+Margaret.
+
+"And are we never to meet again?" she asked, with an intonation of
+passionate sorrow.
+
+"That must depend on God's will," said Sir Piers, gravely.
+
+Clarice covered her face with both hands, and the bitter tears trickled
+fast through her fingers.
+
+"Oh, why is God's will so hard?" she cried.  "Could He not have left us
+in peace?  We had only each other."
+
+"Hush, sweet heart!  It is wrong to say that.  And yet it is hardly
+possible not to think it."
+
+"It is not possible!" sobbed Clarice.  "Does not God know it is not
+possible?"
+
+"I suppose He must," said Sir Piers, gloomily.
+
+There was no comfort in the thought to either.  There never is any to
+those who do not know God.  And Piers was only feeling after Him, if
+haply he might find Him, and barely conscious even of that; while
+Clarice had not reached even that point.  To both of them, in this very
+anguish, Christ was saying, "Come unto Me;" but their own cry of pain
+hindered them from hearing Him.  It was not likely they should hear,
+just then, when the sunlight of life was being extinguished, and the
+music was dying to its close.  But afterwards, in the silence and the
+darkness, when the sounds were hushed and the lights were out, and there
+was nothing that could be done but to endure, then the still, small
+voice might make itself heard, and the crushed hearts might sob out
+their answer.
+
+So they parted.  "They took but ane kiss, and tare themselves away," to
+meet when it was God's will, and not knowing on which side of the river
+of death that would be.
+
+Half an hour had passed since Sir Piers' step had died away on the
+terrace, and Clarice still sat where he had left her, in crushed and
+silent stillness.  If this night could only be the end of it!  If things
+had not to go on!
+
+"Clarice," said a pitying voice; and a hand was laid upon her head as if
+in fatherly blessing.
+
+Clarice was too stunned with pain to remember her courtly duties.  She
+only looked up at Earl Edmund.
+
+"Clarice, my poor child!  I want thee to know that I did my best for
+thee."
+
+"I humbly thank your Lordship," Clarice forced herself to say.
+
+"And it may be, my child, though it seems hard to believe, that God is
+doing His best for thee too."
+
+"Then what would His worst be?" came in a gush from Clarice.
+
+"It might be that for which thou wouldst thank Him now."
+
+The sorrowing girl was arrested in spite of herself, for the Earl spoke
+in that tone of quiet certainty which has more effect on an undecided
+mind than any words.  She wondered how he knew, not realising that he
+knows "more than the ancients" who knows God and sorrow.
+
+"My child," said the Earl again, "man's best and God's best are often
+very different things.  In the eyes of Monseigneur Saint Jacob, the best
+thing would have been to spare his son from being cast into the pit and
+sold to the Ishmaelites.  But God's best was to sell the boy into
+slavery, and to send him into a dungeon, and then to lift him up to the
+steps of the king's throne.  When _then_ comes, Clarice, we shall be
+satisfied with what happened to us now."
+
+"When will it come, my Lord?" asked Clarice, in a dreary tone.
+
+"When it is best," replied the Earl quietly.
+
+"Your Lordship speaks as if you knew!" said Clarice.
+
+"God knows.  And he who knows God may be sure of everything else."
+
+"Is it so much to know God?"
+
+"It is life.  `Without God' and `Without hope' are convertible terms."
+
+"My Lord," said Clarice, wondering much to hear a layman use language
+which it seemed to her was only fit for priests, "how may one know God?"
+
+"Go and ask Him.  How dost thou know any one?  Is it not by converse and
+companionship?"
+
+There was a silent pause till the Earl spoke again.
+
+"Clarice," he said, "our Lord has a lesson to teach thee.  It rests with
+thee to learn it well or ill.  If thou choose to be idle and obstinate,
+and refuse to learn, thou mayst sit all day long on the form in
+disgrace, and only have the task perfect at last when thou art wearied
+out with thine own perverseness.  But if thou take the book willingly,
+and apply thyself with heart and mind, the task will be soon over, and
+the teacher may give thee leave to go out into the sunshine."
+
+"My Lord," said Clarice, "I do not know how to apply your words here.
+How can I learn this task quickly?"
+
+"Dost thou know, first, what the task is?"
+
+"Truly, no."
+
+"Then let a brother tell thee who has had it set to him.  It is a hard
+lesson, Clarice, and one that an inattentive scholar can make yet harder
+if he will.  It is, `Not my will, but Thine, be done.'"
+
+"I cannot!  I cannot!" cried Clarice passionately.
+
+"Some scholars say that," replied the Earl gently, "until the evening
+shadows grow very long.  They are the weariest of all when they reach
+home."
+
+"My Lord, pardon me, but you cannot understand it!"  Clarice stood up.
+"I am young, and you--"
+
+"I am over forty years," replied the Earl.  "Ah, child, dost thou make
+that blunder?--dost thou think the child's sorrows worse than the man's?
+I have known both, and I tell thee the one is not to be compared to the
+other.  Young hearts are apt to think it, for grief is a thing new and
+strange to them.  But if ever it become to thee as thy daily bread, thou
+wilt understand it better.  It has been mine, Clarice, for eighteen
+years."
+
+That was a year more than Clarice had been in the world.  She looked up
+wonderingly into the saddened, dove-like Plantagenet eyes--those eyes
+characteristic of the House--so sweet in repose, so fiery in anger.
+Clarice had but a dim idea what his sorrow was.
+
+"My Lord," she said, half inquiringly, "methinks you never knew such a
+grief as mine?"
+
+The smile which parted the Earl's lips was full of pity.
+
+"Say rather, maiden, that thou never knewest one like mine.  But God
+knows both, Clarice, and He pities both, and when His time comes He will
+comfort both.  At the best time, child!  Only let us acquaint ourselves
+with Him, for so only can we be at peace.  And now, farewell.  I had
+better go in and preach my sermon to myself."
+
+Clarice was left alone again.  She did not turn back to exactly the same
+train of thought.  A new idea had been given her, which was to become
+the germ of a long train of others.  She hardly put it into words, even
+to herself; but it was this--that God meant something.  He was not
+sitting on the throne of the universe in placid indifference to her
+sorrows; neither was He a malevolent Being who delighted in interfering
+with the plans of His creatures simply to exhibit His own power.  He was
+doing this--somehow--for her benefit.  She saw neither the how nor the
+why; but He saw them, and He meant good to her.  All the world was not
+limited to the Slough of Despond at her feet.  There was blue sky above.
+
+Very vaguely Clarice realised this.  But it was sufficient to soften the
+rocky hardness which had been the worst element of her pain--to take
+away the blind chance against which her impotent wings had been beaten
+in vain efforts to escape from the dark cage.  It was that contact with
+"the living will of a living person," which gives the human element to
+what would otherwise be hard, blind, pitiless fate.
+
+Clarice rose, and looked up to the stars.  No words came.  The cry of
+her heart was, "O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me."  But she was
+too ignorant to weave it into a prayer.  When human hearts look up to
+God in wordless agony, the Intercessor translates the attitude into the
+words of Heaven.
+
+Sad or bright, there was no time for thought on the Tuesday morning.
+The day was bitterly cold, for it was the 16th of January 1291, and a
+heavy hoar-frost silvered all the trees, and weighed down the bushes in
+the Palace garden.  Diana, wrapped in her white furs, was the picture of
+health and merriment.  Was it because she really had not enough heart to
+care, or because she was determined not to give herself a moment to
+consider?  Clarice, white as the fur round her throat, pale and
+heavy-eyed, grave and silent, followed Diana into the Palace chapel.
+The Countess was there, handsomely attired, and the Earl, in golden
+armour; but they stood on opposite sides of the chancel, and the former
+ignored her lord's existence.  Diana's wedding came first.  De Chaucombe
+behaved a little more amiably than usual, and, contrary to all his
+habits, actually offered his hand to assist his bride to rise.  Then
+Diana fell back to the side of the Countess, and Fulk to that of the
+Earl, and Clarice recognised that the moment of her sacrifice was come.
+
+With one passionately pleading look at the Lady Margaret--who met it as
+if she had been made of stone--Clarice slowly moved forward to the
+altar.  She shuddered inwardly as Vivian Barkeworth took her hand into
+his clasp, and answered the queries addressed to her in so low a voice
+that Father Miles took the words for granted.  It seemed only a few
+minutes before she woke to the miserable truth that she was now Vivian's
+wife, and that to think any more of Piers Ingham was a sin against God.
+
+Clarice dragged herself through the bridal festivities--how, she never
+knew.  Diana was the life of the party.  So bright and gay she was that
+she might never have heard of such a thing as disappointment.  She
+danced with everybody, entered into all the games with the zest of an
+eager child, and kept the hall ringing with merry laughter, while
+Clarice moved through them all as if a weight of lead were upon her, and
+looked as though she should never smile again.  Accident at length threw
+the two brides close together.
+
+"Art thou going to look thus woe-begone all thy life through, Clarice?"
+inquired the Lady De Chaucombe.
+
+"I do not know," answered Clarice, gloomily.  "I only hope it will not
+be long."
+
+"What will not be long?--thy sorrowful looks?"
+
+"No--my life."
+
+"Don't let me hear such nonsense," exclaimed Diana, with a little of her
+old sharpness.  "Men are all deceivers, child.  There is not one of them
+worth spoiling a woman's life for.  Clarice, don't be a simpleton!"
+
+"Not more than I can help," said Clarice, with the shadow of a smile;
+and then De Echingham came up and besought her hand for the next dance,
+and she was caught away again into the whirl.
+
+The dancing, which was so much a matter of course at a wedding, that
+even the Countess did not venture to interfere with it, was followed by
+the hoydenish romps which were considered equally necessary, and which
+fell into final desuetude about the period of the accession of the House
+of Hanover.  King Charles the First's good taste had led him to frown
+upon them, and utterly to prohibit them at his own wedding; but the
+people in general were attached to their amusements, rough and even
+gross as they often were, and the improvement filtered down from palace
+to cottage only very slowly.
+
+The cutting of the two bride-cakes, as usual, was one of the most
+interesting incidents.  It was then, and long afterwards, customary to
+insert three articles in a bride-cake, which were considered to foretell
+the fortunes of the persons in whose possession they were found when the
+cakes were cut up.  The gold ring denoted speedy marriage; the silver
+penny indicated future wealth; while the thimble infallibly doomed its
+recipient to be an old maid.  The division of Diana's cake revealed Sir
+Reginald de Echingham in possession of the ring, evidently to his
+satisfaction; while Olympias, with the reverse sensation, discovered in
+her slice both the penny and the thimble.  Clarice's cake proved even
+more productive of mirth; for the thimble fell to the Countess, while
+the Earl held up the silver penny, laughingly remarking that he was the
+last person who ought to have had that, since he had already more of
+them than he wanted.  But the fun came to its apex when the ring was
+discovered in the hand of Mistress Underdone, who indignantly asserted
+that if a thousand gold rings were showered upon her from as many cakes
+they would not induce her to marry again.  She thought two husbands were
+enough for any reasonable woman; and if not, she was too old now for
+folly of that sort.  Sir Lambert sent the company into convulsions of
+laughter by clasping his hands on this announcement with a look of
+pretended despair, upon which Mistress Underdone, justly indignant, gave
+him such a box on the ear that he was occupied in rubbing it for the
+next ten minutes, thereby increasing the merriment of the rest.  Loudest
+and brightest of all the laughers was Diana.  She at least had not
+broken her heart.  Clarice, pale and silent in the corner, where she sat
+and watched the rest, dimly wondered if Diana had any heart to break.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  There were two divisions of "damsels" in the household of a
+mediaeval princess, the _domicellae_ and the _domicellae camera_.  The
+former, who corresponded to the modern Maids of Honour, were young and
+unmarried; the latter, the Ladies of the Bedchamber, were always married
+women.  Sufficient notice of this distinction has not been taken by
+modern writers.  Had it so been, the supposition long held of the
+identity of Philippa Chaucer, _domicella camera_, with Philippa Pycard,
+_domicella_, could scarcely have arisen; nor should we be told that
+Chaucer's marriage did not occur until 1369, or later, when we find
+Philippa in office as Lady of the Bedchamber in 1366.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+DAME MAISENTA DOES NOT SEE IT.
+
+  "With a little hoard of maxims, preaching down a daughter's
+  heart."--_Tennyson_.
+
+Earl Edmund had not been callous to the white, woeful face under one of
+the bridal wreaths.  He set himself to think how most pleasantly to
+divert the thoughts of Clarice; and the result of his meditations was a
+request to Father Miles that he would induce the Countess to invite the
+parents of Clarice on a visit.  The Countess always obeyed Father Miles,
+though had she known whence the suggestion came, she might have been
+less docile.  A letter, tied up with red silk, and sealed with the
+Countess's seal, was despatched by a messenger to Dame La Theyn, whom it
+put into no small flutter of nervous excitement.
+
+A journey to London was a tremendous idea to that worthy woman, though
+she lived but forty miles from the metropolis.  She had never been there
+in her life.  Sir Gilbert had once visited it, and had dilated on the
+size, splendour, and attractions of the place, till it stood, in the
+Dame's eyes, next to going to Heaven.  It may, indeed, be doubted if she
+would not have found herself a good deal more at home in the former
+place than the latter.
+
+Three sumpter-mules were laden with the richest garments and ornaments
+in the wardrobes of knight and dame.  Two armed servants were on one
+horse, Sir Gilbert and his wife on another; and thus provided, late in
+February, they drew bridle at the gate of Whitehall Palace.  Clarice had
+not been told of their coming by the Countess, because she was not
+sufficiently interested; by the Earl, because he wished it to be a
+pleasant surprise.  She was called out into the ante-chamber one
+afternoon, and, to her complete astonishment, found herself in the
+presence of her parents.
+
+The greeting was tolerably warm.
+
+"Why, child, what hast done to thy cheeks?" demanded Sir Gilbert, when
+he had kissed his palefaced daughter.  "'Tis all the smoke--that's what
+it is!"
+
+"Nay; be sure 'tis the late hours," responded the Dame.  "I'll warrant
+you they go not to bed here afore seven o' the clock.  Eh, Clarice?"
+
+"Not before eight, Dame," answered Clarice, with a smile.
+
+"Eight!" cried Dame Maisenta.  "Eh, deary me!  Mine head to a pod of
+peas, but that's a hearing!  And what time get they up of a morrow?"
+
+"The Lady rises commonly by five or soon after."
+
+"Saint Wulstan be our aid!  Heard I ever the like?  Why, I am never abed
+after three!"
+
+"So thou art become Dame Clarice?" said her father, jovially.
+
+The smile died instantly from Clarice's lips.  "Yes," she said,
+drearily.
+
+"Where is thy knight, lass?" demanded her mother.
+
+"You will see him in hall," replied Clarice.  And when they went down to
+supper she presented Vivian in due form.
+
+No one knew better than Vivian Barkeworth how to adapt himself to his
+company.  He measured his bride's parents as accurately, in the first
+five minutes, as a draper would measure a yard of calico.  It is not
+surprising if they were both delighted with him.
+
+The Countess received her guests with careless condescension, the Earl
+with kind cordiality.  Dame La Theyn was deeply interested in seeing
+both.  But her chief aim was a long _tete-a-tete_ discourse with
+Clarice, which she obtained on the day following her arrival.  The
+Countess, as usual, had gone to visit a shrine, and Clarice, being off
+duty, took her mother to the terrace, where they could chat undisturbed.
+
+Some of us modern folks would rather shrink from sitting on an open
+terrace in February; but our forefathers were wonderfully independent of
+the weather, and seem to have been singularly callous in respect to heat
+and cold.  Dame La Theyn made no objection to the airiness of her
+position, but settled herself comfortably in the corner of the stone
+bench, and prepared for her chat with much gusto.
+
+"Well, child," was the Dame's first remark, "the good saints have
+ordered matters rarely for thee.  I ventured not to look for such good
+fortune, not so soon as this.  Trust me, but I was rejoiced when I read
+thy lady's letter, to hear that thou wert well wed unto a knight, and
+that she had found all the gear.  I warrant thee, the grass grew not
+under my feet afore Dame Rouse, and Mistress Swetapple, and every woman
+of our neighbours, down to Joan Stick-i'-th'-Lane, knew the good luck
+that was come to thee."
+
+Clarice sat with her hands in her lap looking out on the river.  Good
+luck!  Could Dame La Theyn see no further than that!
+
+"Why, lass, what is come to thee?" demanded the Dame, when she found no
+response.  "Sure, thou art not ungrateful to thy lady for her care and
+goodness!  That were a sin to be shriven for."
+
+Clarice turned her wan face towards her mother.
+
+"Grateful!" she said.  "For what should I be thankful to her?  Dame, she
+has torn me away from the only one in the world that I loved, and has
+forced me to wed a man whom I alike fear and hate.  Do you think that
+matter for thankfulness, or does she!"
+
+"Tut, tut!" said the Dame.  "Do not ruffle up thy feathers like a pigeon
+that has got bread-crumbs when he looked for corn!  Why, child, 'tis but
+what all women have to put up with.  We all have our calf-loves and bits
+of maidenly fancies, but who ever thought they were to rule the roast?
+Sure, Clarice, thou hast more sense than so?"
+
+"Dame, pardon me, but you understand not.  This was no light love of
+mine--no passing fancy that a newer one might have put out.  It was the
+one hope and joy of my whole life.  I had nothing else to live for."
+
+To Clarice's horror, the rejoinder to her rhetoric was what the Dame
+herself would have called "a jolly laugh."
+
+"Dear, dear, how like all young maids be!" cried the mother.  "Just the
+very thought had I when my good knight my father sent away Master Pride,
+and told me I must needs wed with thy father, Sir Gilbert.  That is
+twenty years gone this winter Clarice, and I swear to thee I thought
+mine heart was broke.  Look on me now.  Look I like a woman that had
+brake her heart o' love?  I trow not, by my troth!"
+
+No; certainly no one would have credited that rosy, comfortable matron
+with having broken her heart any number of years ago.
+
+"And thou wilt see, too, when twenty years be over, Clarice, I warrant
+thee thou shalt look back and laugh at thine own folly.  Deary me,
+child!  Folks cannot weep for ever and the day after.  Wait till thou
+art forty, and then see if thy trouble be as sore in thy mind then as
+now."
+
+Forty!  Should she ever be forty?  Clarice fondly hoped not.  And would
+any lapse of years change the love which seemed to her interwoven with
+every fibre of her heart?  That heart cried out and said, Impossible!
+But Dame La Theyn heard no answer.
+
+"When thou hast dwelt on middle earth [Note 1], child, as long as I
+have, thou wilt look on things more in proportion.  There be other
+affairs in life than lovemaking.  Women spend not all their days
+thinking of wooing, and men still less.  I warrant thee thy lover, whoso
+he be, shall right soon comfort himself with some other damsel.  Never
+suspect a man of constancy, child.  They know not what the word means."
+
+Clarice's inner consciousness violently contradicted this sweeping
+statement.  But she kept silence still.
+
+"Ah, I see!" said her mother, laughing.  "Not a word dost thou credit
+me.  I may as well save my breath to cool my porridge.  Howsoe'er,
+Clarice, when thou hast come to forty years, if I am yet alive, let me
+hear thy thoughts thereupon.  Long ere that time come, as sure as eggs
+be eggs, thou shalt be a-reading the same lesson to a lass of thine, if
+it please God so to bless thee.  And she'll not believe thee a word, any
+more than thou dost me.  Eh, these young folks, these young folks!
+truly, they be rare fun for us old ones.  They think they've gotten all
+the wisdom that ever dwelt in King Solomon's head, and we may stand
+aside and doff our caps to them.  Good lack!--but this world is a queer
+place, and a merry!"
+
+Clarice thought she had not found it a merry locality by any means.
+
+"And what ails thee at thy knight, child?  He is as well-favoured and
+tall of his hands as e'er a one.  Trust me, but I liked him well, and so
+said thy father.  He is a pleasant fellow, no less than a comely.  What
+ails thee at him?"
+
+"Dame, I cannot feel to trust him."
+
+"Give o'er with thy nonsense!  Thou mayest trust him as well as another
+man.  They are all alike.  They want their own way, and to please
+themselves, and if they've gotten a bit of time and thought o'er they'll
+maybe please thee at after.  That's the way of the world, child.  If
+thou art one of those silly lasses that look for a man who shall never
+let his eyes rove from thee, nor never make no love to nobody else, why,
+thou mayest have thy search for thy pains.  Thou art little like to
+catch that lark afore the sky falls."
+
+Clarice thought that lark had been caught for her, and had been torn
+from her.
+
+"And what matter?" continued Dame La Theyn.  "If a man likes his wife
+the best, and treats her reasonable kind, as the most do--and I make no
+doubt thine shall--why should he not have his little pleasures?  Thou
+canst do a bit on thine own account.  But mind thou, keep on the
+windward side o' decency.  'Tis no good committing o' mortal sin, and a
+deal o' trouble to get shriven for it.  Mind thy ways afore the world!
+And let not thy knight get angered with thee, no more.  But I'll tell
+thee, Clarice, thou wilt anger him afore long, to carry thyself thus
+towards him.  Of course a man knows he must put up with a bit of
+perversity and bashfulness when he is first wed; because he can guess
+reasonable well that the maid might not have chose him her own self.
+But it does not do to keep it up.  Thou must mind thy ways, child."
+
+Clarice was almost holding her breath.  Whether horror or disgust were
+the feeling uppermost in her mind, she would have found difficult to
+tell.  Was this her mother, who gave her such counsel?  And were all
+women like that?  _One_ other distinct idea was left to her--that there
+was an additional reason for dying--to get out of it all.
+
+"Thou art but a simple lass, I can see," reflectively added Dame La
+Theyn.  "Thou hast right the young lass's notions touching truth, and
+faith, and constancy, and such like.  All a parcel of moonshine, child!
+There is no such thing, not in this world.  Some folks be a bit worse
+than others, but that's all.  I dare reckon thy knight is one of the
+better end.  At any rate, thou wilt find it comfortable to think so."
+
+Clarice was inwardly convinced that Vivian belonged to the scrag end, so
+far as character went.
+
+"That's the true way to get through the world, child.  Shut thy eyes to
+whatever thou wouldst not like to see.  Nobody'll admire thee more for
+having red rims to 'em.  And, dear heart, where's the good?  'Tis none
+but fools break their hearts.  Wise folks jog on jollily.  And if
+there's somewhat to forgive on the one side, why, there'll be somewhat
+on the other.  Thou art not an angel--don't fancy it.  And if he isn't
+neither--"
+
+Of that fact Clarice felt superlatively convinced.
+
+"The best way is not to expect it of him, and thou wilt be the less
+disappointed.  So get out thy ribbons and busk thee, and let's have no
+more tears shed.  There's been a quart too much already."
+
+A slight movement of nervous impatience was the sole reply.
+
+"Eh, Clarice?  Ne'er a word, trow?"
+
+Then she turned round a wan, set, distressed face, with fervent
+determination glowing in the eyes.
+
+"Mother!  I would rather die, and be out of it!"
+
+"Be out of what, quotha?" demanded Dame La Theyn, in astonished tones.
+
+"This world," said Clarice, through her set teeth.  "This hard, cold,
+cruel, miserable, wicked world.  Is there only one of two lives before
+me--either to harden into stone and crush other hearts, or to be crushed
+by the others that have got hard before me?  Oh, Mother, Mother! is
+there nothing in the world for a woman but _that_?--God, let me die
+before I come to either!"
+
+"Deary, deary, deary me!" seemed to be all that Dame La Theyn felt
+herself capable of saying.
+
+"A few weeks ago," Clarice went on, "before--_this_, there was a higher
+and better view of life given to me.  One that would make _one's_
+crushed heart grow softer, and not harder; that was upward and not
+downward; that led to Heaven and God, not to Hell and Satan.  There is
+no hope for me in this life but the hope of Heaven.  For pity's sake let
+me keep that!  If every other human creature is going down--you seem to
+think so--let me go higher, not lower.  Because my life has been spoiled
+for me, shall I deliberately poison my own soul?  May God forbid it me!
+If I am to spend my life with demons, let my spirit live with God."
+
+The feelings of Dame La Theyn, on hearing this speech from Clarice, were
+not capable of expression in words.
+
+In her eyes, as in those of all Romanists, there were two lives which a
+man or woman could lead--the religious and the secular.  To lead a
+religious life meant, as a matter of course, to go into the cloister.
+Matrimony and piety were simply incompatible.  Clarice was a married
+woman: _ergo_, she could not possibly be religious.  Dame La Theyn's
+mind, to use one of her favourite expressions, was all of a jumble with
+these extraordinary ideas of which her daughter had unaccountably got
+hold.  "What on earth is the child driving at? is she mad?" thought her
+mother.
+
+"What dost thou mean, child?" inquired the extremely puzzled Dame.
+"Thou canst not go into the cloister--thou art wed.  Dear heart, but I
+never reckoned thou hadst any vocation!  Thou shouldst have told thy
+lady."
+
+"I do not want the cloister," said Clarice.  "I want to do God's will.
+I want to belong to God."
+
+"Why, that is the same thing!" responded the still perplexed woman.
+
+"The Lord Earl is not a monk," replied Clarice.  "And I am sure he
+belongs to God, for he knows Him better than any priest that I ever
+saw."
+
+"Child, child!  Did I not tell thee, afore ever thou earnest into this
+house, that thy Lord was a man full of queer fancies, and all manner of
+strange things?  Don't thee go and get notions into thine head, for
+mercy's sake!  Thou must live either in the world or the cloister.  Who
+ever heard of a wedded woman devote to religion?  Thou canst not have
+both--'tis nonsense.  Is that one of thy Lord's queer notions?  Sure,
+these friars never taught thee so?"
+
+"The friars never taught me anything.  Father Bevis tried to help me,
+but he did not know how.  My Lord was the only one who understood."
+
+"Understood?  Understood what?"
+
+"Who understood me, and who understood God."
+
+"Clarice, what manner of tongue art thou talking?  'Tis none I never
+learned."
+
+No, for Clarice was beginning to lisp the language of Canaan, and "they
+that kept the fair were men of this world."  What wonder if she and her
+thoroughly time-serving mother found it impossible to understand each
+other?
+
+"I cannot make thee out, lass.  If thou wert aware afore thou wert wed
+that thou hadst a vocation, 'twas right wicked of thee not to tell thy
+confessor and thy mistress, both.  But I cannot see how it well could,
+when thou wert all head o'er ears o' love with some gallant or other--
+the saints know whom.  I reckon it undecent, in very deed, Clarice, to
+meddle up a love-tale with matters of religion.  I do wonder thou hast
+no more sense of fitness and decorum."
+
+"It were a sad thing," said Clarice quietly, "if only irreligious people
+might love each other."
+
+"Love each other!  Dear heart, thy brains must be made o' forcemeat!
+Thou hast got love, and religion, and living, and all manner o' things,
+jumbled up together in a pie.  They've nought to do with each other,
+thou silly lass."
+
+"If religion has nought to do with living, Dame, under your good
+pleasure, what has it to do with?"
+
+A query which Dame La Theyn found it as difficult to comprehend as to
+answer.  In her eyes, religion was a thing to take to church on Sunday,
+and life was restricted to the periods when people were not in church.
+When she laid up her Sunday gown in lavender, she put her religion in
+with it.  Of course, nuns were religious every day, but nobody else ever
+thought of such an unreasonable thing.  Clarice's new ideas, therefore,
+to her, were simply preposterous and irrational.
+
+"Clarice!" she said, in tones of considerable surprise, "I do wonder
+what's come o'er thee!  This is not the lass I sent to Oakham.  Have the
+fairies been and changed thee, or what on earth has happened to thee?  I
+cannot make thee out!"
+
+"I hardly know what has happened to me," was the answer, "but I think it
+is that I have gone nearer God.  He ploughed up my heart with the furrow
+of bitter sorrow, and then He made it soft with the dew of His grace.  I
+suppose the seed will come next.  What that is I do not know yet.  But
+my knowing does not matter if He knows."
+
+The difference which Dame La Theyn failed to understand was the
+difference between life and death.  The words of the Earl had been used
+as a seed of life, and the life was growing.  It is the necessity of
+life to grow, and it is an impossibility that death should appreciate
+life.
+
+"Well!" was the Dame's conclusion, delivered as she rose from the stone
+bench, in a perplexed and disappointed tone, "I reckon thou wilt be like
+to take thine own way, child, for I cannot make either head or tail of
+thy notions.  Only I do hope thou wilt not set up to be unlike everybody
+else.  Depend upon it, Clarice, a woman never comes to no good when she
+sets up to be better than her neighbours.  It is bad enough in anybody,
+but 'tis worser in a woman than a man.  I cannot tell who has stuck thy
+queer notions into thee--whether 'tis thy Lord, or thy lover, or who;
+but I would to all the saints he had let thee be.  I liked thee a deal
+better afore, I can tell thee.  I never had no fancy for philosophy and
+such."
+
+"Mother," said Clarice softly, "I think it was God."
+
+"Gently, child!  No bad language, prithee."  Dame La Theyn looked upon
+pious language as profanity when uttered in an unconsecrated place.
+"But if it were the Almighty that put these notions into thy head, I
+pray He'll take 'em out again."
+
+"I think not," quietly replied Clarice.
+
+And so the scene closed.  Neither had understood the other, so far, at
+least, as spiritual matters were concerned.  But in respect to the
+secular question Dame La Theyn could enter into Clarice's thoughts more
+than she chose to allow.  The dialogue stirred within her faint
+memories--not quite dead--of that earlier time when her tears had flowed
+for the like cause, and when she had felt absolutely certain that she
+could never be happy again.  But her love had been of a selfish and
+surface kind, and the wound, never more than skin-deep, had healed
+rapidly and left no scar.  Was it surprising if she took it for granted
+that her daughter's was of the same class, and would heal with equal
+rapidity and completeness?  Beside this, she thought it very unwise
+policy to let Clarice perceive that she did understand her in any wise.
+It would encourage her in her folly, Dame La Theyn considered, if she
+supposed that so wise a person as her mother could have any sympathy
+with such notions.  So she wrapped herself complacently in her mantle of
+wisdom, and never perceived that she was severing the last strand of the
+rope which bound her child's heart to her own.
+
+"O, purblind race of miserable men!"
+
+How strangely we all spend our lives in the anxious labour of straining
+out gnats, while we scarcely detect the moment when we swallow the
+camel!
+
+A long private conversation between Clarice's parents resulted the next
+day in Sir Gilbert taking her in hand.  His comprehension was even less
+than her mother's, though it lay in a different direction.
+
+"Well, Clarice, my dame tells me thou art not altogether well pleased
+with thy wedding.  What didst thou wish otherwise, lass?"
+
+"The man," said Clarice, shortly enough.
+
+"What, is not one man as good as another?" demanded her father.
+
+"Not to me, Sir," said his daughter.
+
+"I am afeared, Clarice, thou hast some romantic notions.  They are all
+very pretty to play with, but they don't do for this world, child.  Thou
+hast better shake them out of thine head, and be content with thy lot."
+
+"It is a bad world, I know," replied Clarice.  "But it is hard to be
+content, when life has been emptied and spoiled for one."
+
+"Folly, child, folly!" said Sir Gilbert.  "Thou mayest have as many silk
+gowns now as thou couldst have had with any other knight; and I dare be
+bound Sir Vivian should give thee a gold chain if thou wert pining for
+it.  Should that content thee?"
+
+"No, Sir."
+
+Sir Gilbert was puzzled.  A woman whose perfect happiness could not be
+secured by a gold chain was an enigma to him.
+
+"Then what would content thee?" he asked.
+
+"What I can never have now," answered Clarice.  "It may be, as time goes
+on, that God will make me content without it--content with His will, and
+no more.  But I doubt if even He could do that just yet.  The wisest
+physician living cannot heal a wound in a minute.  It must have its
+time."
+
+Sir Gilbert tried to puzzle his way through this speech.
+
+"Well, child, I do not see what I can do for thee."
+
+"I thank you for wishing it, fair Sir.  No, you can do nothing.  No one
+can do anything for me, except let me alone, and pray to God to heal the
+wound."
+
+"Well, lass, I can do that," said her father, brightening.  "I will say
+the rosary all over for thee once in the week, and give a candle to our
+Lady.  Will that do thee a bit of good, eh?"
+
+Clarice had an instinctive feeling, that while the rosary and the candle
+might be a doubtful good, the rough tenderness of her father was a
+positive one.  Little as Sir Gilbert could enter into her ideas, his
+affection was truer and more unselfish than that of her mother.  Neither
+of them was very deeply attached to her; but Sir Gilbert's love could
+have borne the harder strain of the two.  Clarice began to recognise the
+fact with touched surprise.
+
+"Fair Sir, I shall be very thankful for your prayers.  It will do me
+good to be loved--so far as anything can do it."
+
+Sir Gilbert was also discovering, with a little astonishment himself,
+that his only child lay nearer to his heart than he had supposed.  His
+heart was a plant which had never received much cultivation, either from
+himself or any other; and love, even in faint throbs, was a rather
+strange sensation.  It made him feel as if something were the matter
+with him, and he could not exactly tell what.  He patted Clarice's
+shoulder, and smoothed down her hair.
+
+"Well, well, child!  I hope all things will settle comfortably by and
+by.  But if they should not, and in especial if thy knight were ever
+unkindly toward thee--which God avert!--do not forget that thou hast a
+friend in thine old father.  Maybe he has not shown thee over much
+kindliness neither, but I reckon, my lass, if it came to a pull, there'd
+be a bit to pull at."
+
+Neither Sir Gilbert nor Dame Maisenta ever fully realised the result of
+that visit.  It found Clarice indifferent to both, but ready to reach
+out a hand to either who would clasp it with any appearance of
+tenderness and compassion.  It left her with a heart closed for ever to
+her mother, but for ever open to her father.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  This mediaeval term for the world had its rise in the notion
+that earth stood midway between Heaven and Hell, the one being as far
+below as the other was above.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+THE SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.
+
+  In His name was struck the blow
+  That hath laid thy old life low
+  In a garb of blood-red woe.
+
+A very eventful year was 1291 in England and over all the civilised
+world.  It was the end of the Crusades, the Turks driving the Christians
+from Acre, the last place which they held in Palestine.  It opened with
+the submission of the Scottish succession to the arbitrament of Edward
+the First, and it closed with the funeral of his mother, Queen Eleonore
+of Provence--a woman whom England was not able to thank for one good
+deed during her long and stormy reign.  She had been a youthful beauty,
+she wrote poetry, and she had never scandalised the nation by any
+impropriety of womanly conduct.  But these three statements close the
+list of her virtues.  She was equally grasping, unscrupulous, and
+extravagant.  In her old age she retired to the Convent of Amesbury,
+where her two granddaughters, Mary of England, and Alianora of Bretagne,
+were nuns already, for the desirable purpose of "making her salvation."
+Perhaps she thought she had made it when the summons came to her in the
+autumn of 1291.  No voice had whispered to her, all through her long
+life of nearly eighty years, that if that ever were to be--
+
+  "Jesus Christ has done it all
+  Long, long ago."
+
+Matters had settled down quietly enough in Whitehall Palace.  Sir Fulk
+de Chaucombe and Diana had been promoted to the royal household--the
+former as attendant upon the King, the latter as Lady of the Bedchamber
+to his eldest daughter, the Princess Alianora, who, though twenty-seven
+years of age, was still unmarried.  It was a cause of some surprise in
+her household that the Countess of Cornwall did not fill up the vacancy
+created among her maidens by the marriages of Clarice and Diana.  But
+when December came it was evident that before she did so she meant to
+make the vacancy still more complete.
+
+One dark afternoon in that cheerful month, the Lady Margaret marched
+into the bower, where her female attendants usually sat when not engaged
+in more active waiting upon her.  It was Saturday.
+
+"Olympias Trusbut, Roisia de Levinton," she said in her harsh voice,
+which did not sound unlike the rasping of a file, "ye are to be wed on
+Monday morning."
+
+Olympias showed slight signs of going into hysterics, which being
+observed by the Lady Margaret, she calmly desired Felicia to fetch a jug
+of water.  On this hint of what was likely to happen to her if she
+imprudently screamed or fainted, Olympias managed to recover.
+
+"Ye are to wed the two squires," observed their imperious mistress.  "I
+gave the choice to Reginald de Echingham, and he fixed on thee,
+Olympias."
+
+Olympias passed from terror to ecstasy.
+
+"Thou, Roisia, art to wed Ademar de Gernet.  I will give both of you
+your gear."
+
+And away walked the Countess.
+
+"I wish she would have let me alone," said Roisia, in doleful accents.
+
+"Too much to hope for," responded Felicia.
+
+"Dost thou not like De Gernet?" asked Clarice, sympathisingly.
+
+"Oh, I don't dislike him," said Roisia; "but I am not so fond of him as
+that comes to."
+
+An hour or two later, however, Mistress Underdone appeared, in a state
+of flurry by no means her normal one.
+
+"Well, here is a pretty tale," said she.  "Not for thee, Olympias;
+matters be running smooth for thee, though the Lord Earl did say," added
+she, laughing, "that incense was as breath of life to Narcissus, and he
+would needs choose the maid that should burn plenty on his altar.  But--
+the thing is fair unheard of!--Ademar de Gernet refuses to wed under
+direction from the Lady."
+
+"Why?" asked Roisia, looking rather insulted.
+
+"Oh, it has nought to do with thee, child," said Mistress Underdone.
+"Quoth he that he desired all happiness to thee, and pardon of thee for
+thus dealing; but having given his heart to another of the Lady's
+damsels, he would not wed with any but her."
+
+"Why, that must be Felicia," said the other three together.
+
+Felicia looked flattered and conscious.
+
+"Well, I reckon so," answered Mistress Underdone.  "Howbeit, the Lady
+hath sent for him hither, to know of him in thy presence what he would
+be at."
+
+"_Ha, chetife_!" exclaimed Roisia.  "I wish it had been somewhere else."
+
+"Well, I cannot quite--.  Hush! here she comes."
+
+And for the second time that day in stalked the Countess, and sat down
+on the curule chair which Mistress Underdone set for her, looking like a
+judge, and a very stern one, too.  In another minute the culprit made
+his appearance, in charge of Sir Lambert Aylmer.
+
+"Now, De Gernet, what means this?" irascibly demanded his mistress.
+
+"Lady, it means not disobedience to you, nor any displeasance done to
+this young damsel"--and De Gernet turned and bowed to Roisia.  "This it
+means, that I dearly love another of your Ladyship's damsels, and I do
+most humbly and heartily crave your permission to wed with her."
+
+"What, Felicia de Fay?" said the Countess.
+
+"Under your Ladyship's pleasure and her pardon, no."
+
+Felicia's face changed evilly.
+
+"But who, then?  There is none other."
+
+"Let my Lady be pleased to pardon me.  There is one other--Heliet
+Pride."
+
+The faces in the bower just then might have furnished a study for an
+artist.  Those of Clarice and Olympias expressed surprise mixed with
+some pleasure; so did Mistress Underdone's, but the degree of both was
+intense.  The Countess looked half vexed and wholly astonished, with a
+little contempt superadded.  Felicia's face foreboded nothing but ill to
+either Ademar or Heliet.
+
+"Heliet Pride!" cried the Countess sharply.  "Why, man, she goes on
+crutches!"
+
+"They will carry her to the chapel, with my Lady's leave," answered De
+Gernet, coolly.
+
+"Gramercy, but thou wilt have a lovely wife!  There'll be no pride in
+her outside her name," said the Countess, with a grim smile at her own
+joke.  Indeed, she was so much amused that she forgot to be angry.
+
+"I will see about that, if my Lady will grant me her grace," responded
+De Gernet, in the same tone.
+
+"Eh, thou shalt have her," said the Countess.  "I shall get Roisia
+disposed of a sight easier than Heliet.  So be it.  Roisia, thou canst
+still prepare for thy bridal; I will find somebody by Monday morning."
+
+The Countess was rising from her chair, when Sir Lambert, after a glance
+at Roisia, observed that if her Ladyship found any difficulty in that
+selection, he had no particular objection to be chosen.
+
+"You!" said the Countess.  "Oh, very good; it will save trouble.  Let it
+be so."
+
+Roisia appeared to be, if anything, rather gratified by the exchange.
+But Clarice, looking into the dark, passionate eyes of Felicia, felt
+troubled for the happiness of Heliet.
+
+Olympias, like Clarice, was promoted to a vacancy among the ladies of
+the bedchamber.  But Sir Lambert and Roisia passed away from the life at
+Whitehall.  The new Maids of Honour were speedily appointed.  Their
+names proved to be Sabina Babingell, Ada Gresley, and Filomena Bray.
+The Countess declared her intention of keeping four only in the future.
+
+The summer of 1292 saw the King on the Scottish border, and in his train
+the Earl and Countess of Cornwall, with their household, moved north as
+far as Oakham.  The household had been increased by one more, for in the
+April previous Clarice Barkeworth became the mother of a little girl.
+This was the first event which helped to reconcile her to her lot.  She
+had been honestly trying hard to do her duty by Vivian, who scarcely
+seemed to think that he had any duty towards her, beyond the obvious one
+of civility in public.  All thought of Piers Ingham had been resolutely
+crushed down, except when it came--as it sometimes did--in the form of a
+dream of bliss from which she awoke to desolation.  A miserable day was
+sure to follow one of those dreams.  The only other moment when she
+allowed herself to think of him was in her evening prayer.
+
+It was a relief to Clarice that she had never heard a word of Piers
+since he left Whitehall.  Her work would have been harder if his name
+had remained a household word.  And yet in another sense it was hard
+never to know what had become of him, whether he were as sad as herself,
+or had been comforted elsewhere.
+
+Vivian's manners in public were perfect to every one, and Clarice shared
+with the rest.  In private she was terribly snubbed whenever he was in a
+bad temper, and carelessly ignored when he was in a good one.  The baby
+daughter, who was such a comfort to Clarice, was a source of bitter
+vexation to Vivian.  In his eyes, while a son would have been an
+undoubted blessing, a daughter was something actively worse than a
+disappointment.  When Clarice timidly inquired what name he wished the
+child to bear, Vivian distinctly intimated that the child and all her
+belongings were totally beneath his notice.  She could call the nuisance
+what she liked.
+
+Clarice silently folded her insulted darling to her breast, and tacitly
+promised it that its mother at least should never think it a nuisance.
+
+"What shall I call her?" she said to Mistress Underdone and Olympias,
+both of whom were inclined to pet the baby exceedingly.
+
+"Oh, something pretty!" said Olympias.  "Don't have a plain, common
+name.  Don't call her Joan, or Parnel, or Beatrice, or Margery, or Maud,
+or Isabel.  You meet those at every turn.  I am quite glad I was not
+called anything of that sort."
+
+"I wouldn't have it too long," was Mistress Underdone's recommendation.
+"I'd never call her Frethesancia, or Florianora, or Aniflesia, or
+Sauncelina.  Let her have a good, honest name, Dame, one syllable, or at
+most two.  You'll have to clip it otherwise."
+
+"I thought of Rose," said Clarice, meditatively.
+
+"Well, it is not common," allowed Olympias.  "Still, it is very short.
+Couldn't you have had it a _little_ longer?"
+
+"That'll do," pronounced Mistress Underdone.  "It is short, and it means
+a pretty, sweet, pleasant thing.  I don't know but I should have called
+my girl Rose, if I'd chosen her name; but her father fancied Heliet, and
+so it had to be so."
+
+"Well, we can call her Rosamond," comfortingly suggested Olympias.
+
+So, in the course of that evening, Father Bevis baptised little Rose
+Barkeworth in the chapel of the palace, the Earl standing sponsor for
+her, with the Lady de Chaucombe and the Lady de Echingham.  The Countess
+had been asked, but to Clarice's private satisfaction had declined, for
+she would much rather have had the Earl, and the canon law forbade
+husband and wife being sponsors to the same infant.
+
+Something was the matter with the Countess.  Every one agreed upon this,
+but nobody could guess what it was.  She was quieter than her wont, and
+was given to long, silent reveries, which had not been usual with her.
+
+Filomena, who was of a lively turn of mind, declared that life at
+Whitehall was becoming absolutely intolerable, and that she should be
+thankful to go to Oakham, for at least it would be something new.
+
+"Thou wilt be thankful to come away again," said Mistress Underdone,
+with a smile.
+
+They reached Oakham about the middle of July, and found Heliet, leaning
+on her crutches, ready to welcome them with smiles in the hall.  No news
+had reached her of their proceedings, and there was a great deal to tell
+her; but Heliet and the baby took to one another in an instant, as if by
+some unseen magical force.
+
+The item of news which most concerned herself was not told to Heliet
+that night.  The next morning, when all were seated at work, and baby
+Rose, in Heliet's lap, was contentedly sucking her very small thumb,
+Mistress Underdone said rather suddenly, "We have not told thee all,
+Heliet."
+
+"I dare say not," replied Heliet, brightly.  "You must have all done a
+great deal more in these two years than you have told me."
+
+"Well, lass, 'tis somewhat I never looked I should have to tell thee.
+There's somebody wants to wed thee."
+
+"Me!" cried Heliet, in large capitals.
+
+"Ay, thee--crutches and all," said her mother laughing.  "He said he did
+not care for thy crutches so they carried thee safe to chapel; and he
+ran the risk of offending the Lady to get thee.  So I reckon he sets
+some store by thee, lass."
+
+"Who is it?" said Heliet, in a low voice, while a bright red spot burned
+in each cheek.
+
+"Ademar de Gernet."  Two or three voices told her.  The bright spots
+burned deeper.
+
+"Is it to be?" was the next question.
+
+"Ay, the Lady said so much; and I reckon she shall give thee thy gear."
+
+"God has been very good to me," said Heliet, softly, rocking little Rose
+gently to and fro.  "But I never thought He meant to give me _that_!"
+
+Clarice looked up, and saw a depth of happy love in the lame girl's
+eyes, which made her sigh for herself.  Then, looking further, she
+perceived a depth of black hate in those of Felicia de Fay, which made
+her tremble for Heliet.
+
+It appeared very shortly that the Countess was in a hurry to get the
+wedding over.  Perhaps she was weary of weddings in her household, for
+she did not seem to be in a good temper about this.  She always thought
+Heliet would have had a vocation, she said, which would have been far
+better for her, with her lameness, than to go limping into chapel to be
+wed.  She wondered nobody saw the impropriety of it.  However, as she
+had promised De Gernet, she supposed it must be so.  She did not know
+what she herself could have been thinking about to make such a foolish
+promise.  She was not usually so silly as that.  However, if it must be,
+it had better be got over.
+
+So got over it was, on an early morning in August, De Gernet receiving
+knighthood from the Earl at the close of the ceremony.
+
+Mistress Underdone had petitioned that her lame and only child might not
+be separated from her, and the Countess--according to her own authority,
+in a moment of foolishness--had granted the petition.  So Heliet was
+drafted among the Ladies of the Bedchamber, but only as an honorary
+distinction.
+
+The manner of the Countess continued to strike every one as unusual.
+Long fits of musing with hands lying idle were becoming common with her,
+and when she rose from them she would generally shut herself up in her
+oratory for the remainder of the day.  Clarice thought, and Heliet
+agreed with her, that something was going to happen.  Once, too, as
+Clarice was carrying Rose along the terrace, she was met by the Earl,
+who stopped and noticed the child, as in his intense and unsatisfied
+love for little children he always did.  Clarice thought he looked even
+unwontedly sorrowful.
+
+From the child, Earl Edmund looked up into the pleased eyes of the young
+mother.
+
+"Dame Clarice," he asked, gently, "are you happier than you were?"
+
+Her eyes grew suddenly grave.
+
+"Thus far," she said, touching the child.  "Otherwise--I try to be
+content with God's will, fair Lord.  It is hard to bear heart-hunger."
+
+"Ah!"  The Earl's tone was significant.  "Yes, it is hard to bear in any
+form," he said, after a pause.  "May God send you never to know, Dame,
+that there is a more terrible form than that wherein you bear it."
+
+And he left her almost abruptly.
+
+The winter of 1292 dragged slowly along.  Filomena declared that her
+body was as starved as her mind, and she should be frozen to death if
+she stayed any longer.  The next day, to everybody's astonishment, the
+Countess issued orders to pack up for travelling.  Sir Vivian and
+Clarice were to go with her--where, she did not say.  So were Olympias,
+Felicia, and Ada.  Mistress Underdone, Sir Reginald, Sir Ademar and
+Heliet, Filomena and Sabina, were left behind at Oakham.
+
+Olympias grumbled extremely at being separated from her husband, and
+Filomena at being left behind.  The Countess would listen to neither.
+
+"When shall we return, under my Lady's leave?" asked Olympias,
+disconsolately.
+
+"_You_ can return," was the curt answer, "when I have done with you.  I
+doubt if Sir Vivian and his dame will return at all.  Ada certainly will
+not."
+
+"_Ha, jolife_!" said Ada, under her breath.  She did not like Oakham.
+
+Clarice, on the contrary, was inclined to make an exclamation of horror.
+For never to return to Oakham meant never to see Heliet again.  And
+what could the Countess mean by a statement which sounded at least as if
+_she_ were not intending to return?
+
+Concerning Felicia the Countess said nothing.  That misnamed young lady
+had during the past few months been trying her best to make Heliet
+miserable.  She began by attempting to flirt with Sir Ademar, but she
+found him completely impervious material.  Her arrows glanced upon his
+shield, and simply dropped off without further notice.  Then she took to
+taunting Heliet with her lameness, but Heliet kept her temper.  Next she
+sneered at her religious views.  Heliet answered her gently, gravely,
+but held her own with undiminished calmness.  This point had been
+reached when the Countess's order was given to depart from Oakham.
+
+Even those least disposed to note the signs of the times felt the
+pressure of some impending calamity.  The strange manner of the
+Countess, the restless misery of the Earl, whom they all loved, the
+busy, bustling, secretly-triumphant air of Father Miles--all denoted
+some hidden working.  Father Bevis had been absent for some weeks, and
+when he returned he wore the appearance of a baffled and out-wearied
+man.
+
+"He looks both tired and disappointed," remarked Clarice to Heliet.
+
+"He looks," said Heliet, "like a man who had been trying very hard to
+scale the wall of a tower, and had been flung back, bruised and
+helpless, upon the stones below."
+
+During the four months last spent at Oakham, Clarice had been absolutely
+silent to Heliet on the subject of her own peculiar trouble.  Perhaps
+she might have remained so, had it not been for the approaching
+separation.  But her lips were unsealed by the strong possibility that
+they might never meet again.  It was late on the last evening that
+Clarice spoke, as she sat rocking Rose's cradle.  She laid bare her
+heart before Heliet's sympathising eyes, until she could trace the whole
+weary journey through the arid desert sands.
+
+"And now tell me, friend," Clarice ended, "why our Lord deals so
+differently with thee and with me.  Are we not both His children?  Yet
+to thee He hath given the desire of thine heart, and on mine He lays His
+hand, and says, `No, child, thou must not have it.'"
+
+"I suppose, beloved," was Heliet's gentle answer, "that the treatment
+suitable for consumption will not answer for fever.  We are both sick of
+the deadly disease of sin; but it takes a different development in each.
+Shall we wonder if the Physician bleeds the one, and administers
+strengthening medicines to the other?"
+
+Clarice's lip quivered, but she rocked Rose's cradle without answering.
+
+"There is also another consideration," pursued Heliet.  "If I mistake
+not--to alter the figure--we have arrived at different points in our
+education.  If one of us can but decline `_puer_,' while the other is
+half through the syntax, is it any wonder if the same lesson be not
+given to us to learn?  Dear Clarice, all God's children need keeping
+down.  I have been kept down all these years by my physical sufferings.
+That is not appointed to thee; thou art tried in another way.  Shall we
+either marvel or murmur because our Father sees that each needs a
+different class of discipline?"
+
+"Oh, Heliet, if I might have had thine!  It seems to me so much the
+lighter cross to carry."
+
+"Then, dear, I am the less honoured--the further from the full share of
+the fellowship of our Lord's sufferings."
+
+Clarice shook her head as if she hardly saw it in that light.
+
+"Clarice, let me tell thee a parable which I read the other day in the
+writings of the holy Fathers.  There were once two monks, dwelling in
+hermits' cells near to each other, each of whom had one choice tree
+given him to cultivate.  When this had lasted a year, the tree of the
+one was in flourishing health, while that of the other was all stunted
+and bare.  `Why, brother,' said the first, `what hast thou done to thy
+tree?'  `Now, judge thou, my brother,' replied the second, `if I could
+possibly have done more for my tree than I have done.  I watched it
+carefully every day.  When I thought it looked dry, I prayed for rain;
+when the ground was too wet, I prayed for dry weather; I prayed for
+north wind or south wind, as I saw them needed.  All that I asked, I
+received; and yet look at my poor tree!  But how didst thou treat thine?
+for thy plan has been so much more successful than mine that I would
+fain try it next year.'  The other monk said only, `I prayed God to make
+my tree flourish, and left it to Him to send what weather He saw good.'"
+
+"He has sent a bitter blast from the north-east," answered Clarice, with
+trembling lips.
+
+"And a hedge to shelter the root of the tree," said Heliet, pointing to
+Rose.
+
+"Oh, my little Rosie!" exclaimed Clarice, kissing the child
+passionately.  "But if God were to take her, Heliet, what would become
+of me?"
+
+"Do not meet trouble half way, dear," said Heliet, gently.  "There is no
+apparent likelihood of any such thing."
+
+"I do not meet it--it comes!" cried poor Clarice.
+
+"Then wait till it comes.  `Sufficient unto the day is the evil
+thereof.'"
+
+"Yet when one has learned by experience that evil is perpetually coming,
+how can one help looking forward to the morrow?"
+
+"Look forward," said Heliet.  "But let it be to the day after
+to-morrow--the day when we shall awake up after Christ's likeness, and
+be satisfied with it--when the Lord our God shall come, and all the
+saints with Him.  Dear, a gem cannot be engraved without the
+cutting-tools.  Wouldst thou rather be spared the pain of the cutting
+than have Christ's likeness graven upon thee?"
+
+"Oh, could it not be done with less cutting?"
+
+"Yes--and more faintly graven then."
+
+Clarice sobbed, without speaking.
+
+"If the likeness is to be in high relief, so that all men may see it,
+and recognise the resemblance, and applaud the graver, Clarice, the tool
+must cut deep."
+
+"If one could ever know that it was nearly done, it would be easier to
+bear it."
+
+"Ay, but how if the vision were granted us, and we saw that it was not
+nearly done by many a year?  It is better not to know, dear.  Yet it is
+natural to us all to think that it would be far easier if we could see.
+Therefore the more `blessed is he that hath not seen, and yet hath
+believed.'"
+
+"I do think," said poor Clarice, drearily, "that I must be the worst
+tried of all His people."
+
+"Clarice," answered Heliet, in a low voice, "I believe there is one in
+this very castle far worse tried than thou--a cross borne which is ten
+times heavier than thine, and has no rose-bud twined around it.  And it
+is carried with the patience of an angel, with the unselfish
+forgetfulness of Christ.  The tool is going very deep there, and already
+the portrait stands out in beautiful relief.  And that cross will never
+be laid down till the sufferer parts with it at the very gate of Heaven.
+At least, so it seems to me.  As the years go on it grows heavier, and
+it is crushing him almost into the dust now."
+
+"Whom dost thou mean, Heliet?"
+
+"The Lord Earl, our master."
+
+"I can see he is sorely tried; but I never quite understand what his
+trouble is."
+
+"The sorrow of being actively hated by the only one whom he loves.  The
+prospect of being left to die, in wifeless and childless loneliness--
+that terrible loneliness of soul which is so much worse to bear than any
+mere physical solitude.  God, for some wise reason, has shut him up to
+Himself.  He has deprived him of all human relationship and human love;
+has said to him, `Lean on Me, and walk loose from all other ties.'  A
+wedded man in the eyes of the world, God has called him in reality to be
+an anchorite of the Order of Providence, to follow the Lamb
+whithersoever He goeth.  And unless mine eyes see very wrongly into the
+future--as would God they did!--the Master is about to lead this dear
+servant into the Gethsemane of His passion, that he may be fashioned
+like Him in all things.  Ah, Clarice, that takes close cutting!"
+
+"Heliet, what dost thou mean?  Canst thou guess what the Lady is about
+to do?"
+
+"I think she is going to leave him."
+
+"Alone?--for ever?"
+
+"For earth," said Heliet, softly.  "God be thanked, that is not for
+ever."
+
+"What an intensely cruel woman she is!" cried Clarice, indignantly.
+
+"Because, I believe, she is a most miserable one."
+
+"Canst thou feel any pity for _her_?"
+
+"It is not so easy as for him.  Yet I suspect she needs it even more
+than he does.  Christ have mercy on them both!"
+
+"I cannot comprehend it," said Clarice.
+
+"I will tell thee one thing," answered Heliet.  "I would rather change
+with thee than with Sir Edmund the Earl; and a hundred times rather with
+thee than with the Lady Margaret.  It is hard to suffer; but it is worse
+to be the occasion of suffering.  Let me die a thousand times over with
+Saint Stephen, before I keep the clothes of the persecutors with Saul."
+
+Clarice stooped and lifted the child from the cradle.
+
+"It is growing late," she said.  "I suppose we ought not to be up
+longer.  Good-night, sweetheart, and many thanks for thy counsel.  It is
+all true, I know; yet--"
+
+"In twenty years, may be--or at the longest, when thou hast seen His
+Face in righteousness--dear Clarice, thou wilt know it, and want to add
+no _yet_."
+
+The soft tap of Heliet's crutches had died away, but Clarice stood still
+with the child in her arms.
+
+"It must be _yet_ now, however," she said, half aloud.  "Do Thy will
+with me--cut me and perfect me; but, O God, leave me, leave me Rosie!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+OVERWHELMED.
+
+  "I am a useless and an evil man,--
+  God planned my life, and let men spoil His plan."
+
+  _Isabella Fyvie Mayo_.
+
+Oakham was left behind; and to the surprise of the party--except the
+Countess, her Prime Minister, Father Miles, and her Foreign Secretary,
+Felicia--they found themselves lodged in Rochester Castle.  Here the
+Countess shut herself up, and communicated with the outward world
+through her Cabinet only.  All orders were brought to the ladies by
+Felicia, and were passed to Vivian by Father Miles.  The latter was
+closeted with his lady for long periods, and rolls of writing appeared
+to be the result of these conferences.
+
+The winter moved on with leaden feet, according to the ideas of the
+household, and of Ada more particularly.
+
+"This sort of life is really something dreadful!" said that young lady.
+"If the frost would only break up, it would make something fresh to look
+at.  There is _nothing_ to be done!"
+
+"Poor Ada!" responded Olympias, laughing.  "Do get some needlework."
+
+"I am tired of needlework," answered Ada.  "I am tired of everything!"
+
+Felicia came in as the words were spoken.
+
+"I have permission to tell you something," she said, with a light in her
+black eyes which Clarice felt sure meant mischief.  "The Lady has
+appealed to the holy Father for a divorce from the Lord Earl."
+
+"Will she get it?" asked Olympias.
+
+"No doubt of it," replied Felicia dogmatically.
+
+"And if so, what will she do then?" asked Ada.
+
+"Her pious intention," said Felicia, the black eyes dancing, "is to
+become a holy Sister of the Order of the blessed Saint Dominic."
+
+"Then what is to become of the Lord Earl?" queried Olympias.  "I suppose
+he can marry somebody else.  I hope he will."
+
+"That is no concern of the Lady's," said Felicia, in a tone of pious
+severity.  "The religious do not trouble their holy repose about
+externs, except to offer prayers for their salvation."
+
+"Why, then, we shall all be turned out!" blankly cried Ada.  "What is to
+become of us all?"
+
+"What will become of me is already settled," replied Felicia demurely.
+"I am about to make profession in the same convent with my mistress."
+
+"Thank the saints!" reached Clarice's ears in a whisper from Olympias,
+and was deliberately echoed in the heart of the former.
+
+"But that will never do for me!" exclaimed Ada.  "I am sure I have no
+vocation.  What am I to do?"
+
+"The Lady proposes, in her goodness," said the Countess's mouthpiece,
+"to get thee an appointment in the household of one of the Ladies the
+King's daughters."
+
+"_Ha, jolife_!" said Ada, and ceased her interjections.
+
+"For you, Dames," continued Felicia, turning to Clarice and Olympias,
+"she says that, being wedded, you are already provided for, and need no
+thought on her part."
+
+"Oh, then, I may go back to Oakham," answered Olympias in a satisfied
+tone.  "That is what I want."
+
+Clarice wondered sorrowfully what her lot would be--whether she might
+return to Oakham.  She felt more at home there than anywhere else.  The
+question was whether, Clarice being now at large, Vivian would continue
+in the Earl's service; and even if he did, they might perhaps no longer
+live in the Castle.  Clarice took this new trouble where she carried
+them all; but the Earl's sorrow was more in her mind than her own.  She
+was learning to cultivate:--
+
+  "A heart at leisure from itself,
+  To soothe and sympathise."
+
+She found that Vivian had already heard the news from Father Miles, and
+she timidly ventured to ask him what he intended to do.
+
+After a few flights of rhetoric concerning the extreme folly of the
+Countess--to forsake an earldom for the cloister was a proceeding not in
+Vivian's line at all--that gentleman condescended so far to answer his
+wife as to observe that he was not fool enough not to know when he was
+well off.  Clarice thankfully conjectured that they would return to
+Oakham.  She thought it better, however, to ask the question point
+blank; and she received a reply--of course accompanied by a snub.
+
+"Why should we be such fools as to go to Oakham when my Lord is in
+Bermondsey?"
+
+"Bermondsey!"  Clarice was surprised.  "You never know anything!" said
+Vivian.  "Of course he is come to town."
+
+Clarice received the snubbing in silence.  "You are so taken up with
+that everlasting brat of yours," added Rose's affectionate father, "that
+you never know what anybody else is doing."
+
+There had been a time when Clarice would have defended herself against
+such accusations.  She was learning now that she suffered least when she
+received them in meek silence.  The only way to deal with Vivian
+Barkeworth was to let him alone.
+
+Two long letters went to the Pope that February; one was from the
+Countess, the other from the Earl.  They are both yet extant, and they
+show the character of each as no description could set it forth.
+
+The Countess's letter is a mixture of pious demureness and querulous
+selfishness.  She tells the Pope that all her life she has intensely
+desired to be a nun: that she is, unhappily, in the irreligious position
+of a matron, and, moreover, is the suffering wife of an impious husband.
+This sinful man requires of her--of her, a soul devoted to religion--
+that she shall behave as if she belonged to the wicked world which holds
+himself within its thrall, and shall sacrifice God to him.  She humbly
+and fervently entreats the holy Father to grant her a divorce from these
+bonds of matrimony which so cruelly oppress her, and to set her soul
+free that it may soar upwards unrestrained.  It is the letter of a woman
+who did wish to serve God, but who was incapable of recognising that it
+was possible to do it without shutting herself up in stone walls, and
+starving body and soul alike.
+
+The Earl's letter is of an entirely different calibre.  He tells the
+Pope in his turn that he is wedded to a woman whom he dearly loves, and
+who resolutely keeps him at arm's length.  She will not make a friend of
+him, nor behave as a good wife ought to do.  This is all he asks of her;
+he is as far as can be from wishing to be unkind to her or to cross her
+wishes.  He only wants her to live with him on reasonable and ordinary
+terms.  But she--and here the Earl's irrepressible humour breaks out; he
+must see the comical side even of his own sorest trouble, and certainly
+this had its comical side--she will not sit next to him at table, but
+insists on putting her confessor between; she will not answer Yes or No
+to his simplest question, but invariably returns the answer through a
+third person.  When she goes into her private apartments, she turns the
+key in his face.  Does the holy Father think this is the way that a
+rational wife ought to behave to her own husband? and will he not
+remonstrate with her, and induce her to use him a little more kindly and
+reasonably than she does?  The Earl's letter is that of an injured and
+justly provoked man; of a man who loves his wife too well to coerce or
+quarrel with her, and who thoroughly perceives the absurdity of his
+position no less than its pain.  Yet he does feel the pain bitterly, and
+he would do anything to end it.
+
+This letter to the Patriarch of Christendom was his last hope.
+Entreaties, remonstrances, patient tenderness, loving kindness, all had
+proved vain.  Now:--
+
+  "He had set his life upon a cast,
+  And he must run the hazard of the die."
+
+Weary and miserable weeks they were, during which Earl Edmund waited the
+Pope's answer.  It came at last.  The Pope replied as only a Romish
+priest could be expected to reply.  For the human anguish of the one he
+had no sympathy; for the quasi-religious sorrows of the other he had
+very much.  He decreed, in the name of God, a full divorce between
+Edmund Earl of Cornwall, and Margaret his wife, coldly admonishing the
+Earl to take the Lord's chastening in good part, and to let the griefs
+of earth lift his soul towards Heaven.
+
+But it was not there that this sorrow lifted it at first.  The human
+agony had to be lived through before the Divine calm and peace could
+come to heal it.  His last effort had been made in vain.  The passionate
+hope of twenty years, that the day would come when his long, patient
+love should meet with its reward even on earth, was shattered to the
+dust.  Even if she wished to come back after this, she could never
+retrace her steps.  Compensation he might find in Heaven, but there
+could be none left for him on earth now.  Even hope was dead within him.
+
+The fatal Bull fell from the Earl's hand, and dropped a dead weight on
+the rushes at his feet.  He was a heart-wrecked man, and life had to go
+on.
+
+Was this man--for his is no fancy picture--a poor weak creature, or was
+he a strong, heroic soul?  Many will write him down the weakling;
+perhaps all but those who have themselves known much of that hope
+deferred which maketh the heart sick, and drains away the moral
+life-blood drop by drop.  It may be that the registers of Heaven held
+appended to his name a different epithet.  It is harder to wait than to
+work; hardest of all to awake after long suspense to the blank
+conviction that all has been in vain, and then to take up the cross and
+meekly follow the Crucified.
+
+Two hours later, a page brought a message to Reginald de Echingham to
+the effect that he was wanted by his master.
+
+Reginald, in his own eyes, was a thoroughly miserable man.  He had
+nobody to talk with, and nothing to do.  He missed Olympias sadly, for
+as the Earl had once jestingly remarked, she burnt perpetual incense on
+his altar, and flattery was a necessary of life to Reginald.  Olympias
+was the only person who admired him nearly as much as he did himself.
+Like the old Romans, _partem et circenses_ constituted his list of
+indispensables; and had it been inevitable to dispense with one of them
+for a time, Reginald would have resigned the bread rather than the game.
+On this particular morning, his basket of grievances was full.  The
+damp had put his moustache out of curl; he had found a poor breakfast
+provided for him--and Reginald was by no means indifferent to his
+breakfast--and, worst of all, the mirror was fixed so high up on the
+wall that he could not see himself comfortably.  The usual religious
+rites of the morning before his own dear image had, therefore, to be
+very imperfectly performed.  Reginald grumbled sorely within himself as
+he went through the cold stone passages which led to the Earl's chamber.
+
+His master lifted very sad eyes to his face.
+
+"De Echingham, I wish to set out for Ashridge to-morrow.  Can you be
+ready?"
+
+Ashridge!  De Echingham would as soon have received marching orders for
+Spitzbergen.  If there were one place in the world which he hated in his
+inmost soul, it was that Priory in Buckinghamshire, which Earl Edmund
+had himself founded.  He would be worse off there than even in
+Bermondsey Palace, with nothing around him but silent walls and almost
+equally silent monks.  De Echingham ventured on remonstrance.
+
+"Would not your Lordship find Berkhamsted much more pleasurable,
+especially at this season?"
+
+"I do not want pleasure," answered the Earl wearily.  "I want rest."
+
+And he rose and began to walk aimlessly up and down the room, in that
+restless manner which was well suited to emphasise his words.
+
+"But--your Lordship's pardon granted--would you not find it far better
+to seek for distraction and pleasance in the Court, than to shut
+yourself up in a gloomy cell with those monks?"
+
+Earl Edmund stopped in his walk and looked at Reginald, whose speech
+touched his quick sense of humour.
+
+"I would advise you to give thanks in your prayers to-night, De
+Echingham."
+
+"For what, my Lord?"
+
+"That you have as yet no conception of a sorrow which is past
+distraction by pleasance.  `Vinegar upon nitre!'  You never tasted it, I
+should think."
+
+"I thank your Lordship, I never did," said Reginald, who took the
+allusion quite literally.
+
+"Well, I have done, and I did not like it," rejoined his master.  "I
+prefer the monks' _soupe maigre_, if you please.  Be so good as to make
+ready, De Echingham."
+
+Reginald obeyed, but grumbling bitterly within his disappointed soul.
+Could there be any misery on earth worse than a cold stone bench, a bowl
+of sorrel soup, and a chapter of Saint Augustine to flavour it?  And
+when they had only just touched the very edge of the London season!
+Why, he would not get a single ball that spring.  Poor Reginald!
+
+They stayed but one night at Berkhamsted, though, to the Earl,
+Berkhamsted was home.  It was the scene of his birth, and of that
+blessed unapprehensive childhood, when brothers and sisters had played
+with him on the Castle green, and light, happy laughter had rung through
+the noble halls; when the hand of his fair Provencal mother had fallen
+softly in caresses on his head, and his generous, if extravagant, father
+had been only too ready to shower gold ducats in anticipation of his
+slightest wish.  All was gone now but the cold gold--hard, silent,
+unfeeling; a miserable comforter indeed.  There was one brother left,
+but he was far away--too far to recall in this desolate hour.  Like a
+sufferer of later date, he must go alone with his God to bear his
+passion.  [Note 1.]
+
+The Priory of Ashridge--of the Order of Bonihomines--which Earl Edmund
+had founded a few years before, was the only one of its class in
+England.  The Predicant Friars were an offshoot of the Dominican Order;
+and the Boni-Homines were a special division of the Predicant Friars.
+It is a singular fact that from this one source of Dominicans or Black
+Monks, sprang the best and the worst issues that ever emanated from
+monachism--the Bonihomines and the Inquisition.
+
+The Boni-Homines were, in a word, the Protestants of the Middle Ages.
+And--a remarkable feature--they were not, like all other seceders,
+persons who had separated themselves from the corruptions of Rome.  They
+were better off, for they had never been tainted with them.  From the
+first ages of primitive Christianity, while on all sides the stream was
+gradually growing sluggish and turbid, in the little nest of valleys
+between Dauphine and Piedmont it had flowed fresh and pure, fed by the
+Word of God, which the Vaudois [Note 2] mountaineers suffered no Pope
+nor Church to wrench or shut up from them.
+
+The oldest name by which we know these early Protestants is Paulikians,
+probably having a reference to the Apostle Paul as either the exponent
+of their doctrines, or the actual founder of their local church.  A
+little later we find them styled Cathari, or Pure Ones.  Then we come on
+their third name of Albigenses, derived from the neighbouring town of
+Alby, where a Council was held which condemned them.  But by whatever
+name they are called they are the same people, living in the same
+valleys, and holding unwaveringly and unadulterated the same faith.
+
+It was by their fourth name of Boni-Homines, or Good Men, that they took
+advantage of the preaching movement set up by the Dominicans in the
+thirteenth century.  They permeated their ranks, however, very gradually
+and quietly--perhaps all the more surely.  For shortly after the date of
+this story, in the early part of the fourteenth century, it is said that
+of every three Predicant Friars, two were Bonihomines.
+
+The Boni-Homines were rife in France before they ever crept into
+England; and the first man to introduce them into England was Edmund,
+Earl of Cornwall.  A hundred years later, when the Boni-Homines had
+shown what they really were, and the leaven with which they had
+saturated society had evolved itself in Lollardism, the monks of other
+Orders did their best to bring both the movement and the men into
+disrepute, and to paint in the blackest colours the name of the Prince
+who had first introduced them into this country.  In no monkish
+chronicle, unless written by a Bonus Homo, will the name of Earl Edmund
+be found recorded without some word of condemnation.  And the
+Boni-Homines, unfortunately for history, were not much given to writing
+chronicles.  Their business was saving souls.
+
+Most important is it to remember, in forming just estimates of the
+character of things--whether men or events--in the Middle Ages, that
+with few exceptions monks were the only historians.  Before we can
+truthfully set down this man as good, or that man as bad, we must,
+therefore, consult other sources--the chronicles of those few writers
+who were not monks, the State papers, but above all, where accessible,
+the personal accounts and private letters of the individuals in
+question.  It is pitiable to see well-meaning Protestant writers, even
+in our _own_ day, repeating after each other the old monkish calumnies,
+and never so much as pausing to inquire, Are these things so?
+
+Late on the evening of the following day the Prior and monks of Ashridge
+stood at the gate ready to receive their founder.  The circumstances of
+his coming were unknown to them, and they were prepared to make it a
+triumphal occasion.  But the first glance at his face altered all that.
+The Prior quietly waved his monks back, and, going forward himself,
+kissed his patron's hand, and led him silently into the monastery.
+
+Poor Sir Reginald found himself condemned to all the sorrows he had
+anticipated, down to the sorrel soup--for it was a vigil--and the straw
+mattress, which, though considerably softer than the plank beds of the
+monks, was barely endurable to his ease-loving limbs.  He looked as he
+felt--extremely uncomfortable and exceedingly cross.
+
+The Prior wasted no attentions on him.  Such troubles as these were not
+worth a thought in his eyes; but his founder's face cost him many
+thoughts.  He saw too plainly that for him had come one of those dread
+hours in life when the floods of deep waters overflow a man, and unless
+God take him into the ark of His covenant mercy, he will go down in the
+current.  It was after some hours of prayer that the Prior tapped at the
+door of the royal guest.
+
+Earl Edmund's quiet voice bade him enter.
+
+"How fares it with my Lord?"
+
+"How is it likely to fare," was the sorrowful answer, "with one who hath
+lost hope?"
+
+The Prior sat down opposite his guest, where he might have the
+opportunity of studying his countenance.  He was himself the senior of
+the Earl, being a man of about sixty years--a man in whom there had been
+a great deal of fire, and in whose dark, gleaming eyes there were many
+sparks left yet.
+
+"Father," said the Earl, in a low, pained voice, "I am perplexed to
+understand God's dealings with me."
+
+"Did you expect to understand them?" was the reply.
+
+"Thus far I did--that I thought He would finish what He had begun.  But
+all my life--so far as this earthly life is concerned--I have been
+striving for one aim, and it has come to utter wreck.  I set one object
+before me, and I thought--I _thought_ it was God's will that I should
+pursue it.  If He, by some act of His own providence, had shown me the
+contrary, I could have understood it better.  But He has let men step in
+and spoil all.  It is not He, but they who have brought about this
+wreck.  My barge is not shattered by the winds and waves of God, but
+scuttled by the violence of pirates.  My life is spoiled, and I do not
+understand why.  I have done nothing but what I thought He intended me
+to do: I have set my heart on one thing, but it was a thing that I
+believed He meant to give me.  It is all mystery to me."
+
+"What is spoiled, my Lord?  Is it what God meant you to do, or what you
+meant God to do?"
+
+The sand grew to a larger heap in the hour-glass before another word was
+spoken.
+
+"Father," said the Prince at last, "have I been intent on following my
+own will, when I thought I was pursuing the Lord's will for me?  Father
+Bevis thinks so: he gave me some very hard words before I came here.  He
+accuses me of idolatry; of loving the creature more than the Creator--
+nay, of setting up my will and aim, and caring nothing for those of the
+Lord.  In his eyes, I ought to have perceived years ago that God called
+me to a life apart with Him, and to have detached my heart from all but
+Himself and His Church.  Father, it is hard enough to realise the wreck
+of all a man hoped and longed for: yet it is harder to know that the
+very hope was sin, that the longing was contrary to the Divine purpose
+for me.  Have I so misunderstood my life?  Have I so misunderstood my
+Master?"
+
+The expression of the Prior's eyes was very pitying and full of
+tenderness.  Hard words were not what he thought needed as the medicine
+for that patient.  They were only to be expected from Father Bevis, who
+had never suffered the least pang of that description of pain.
+
+"My Lord," answered the Prior, gently, "it is written of the wicked man,
+`Thou hast removed Thy judgments from his eyes.'  They are not to be
+seen nor fathomed by him.  And to a great extent it is equally true of
+the righteous man.  Man must not look to be able to comprehend the ways
+of God--they are above him.  It is enough for him if he can walk
+submissively in them."
+
+"I wonder," said the Earl, still pursuing his own train of thought, "if
+I ought to have been a monk.  I never imagined it, for I never felt any
+vocation.  It seemed to me that Providence called me to a life entirely
+different.  Have I made an utter blunder all my life?  I cannot think
+it."
+
+"There is no need to think it, my Lord.  We cannot all be monks, even if
+we would.  And why should we?  It might, perhaps, be better for you to
+think one other thing."
+
+"What?" asked the Earl, with more appearance of interest than he had
+hitherto shown.
+
+"That what you suppose to be the spoiling of your life is just what God
+intended for you."
+
+The Earl's face grew dark.  "What! that all my life long He was leading
+me up to _this_?"
+
+"It looks like it," said the Prior, quietly.
+
+"Oh! but why?"
+
+"Now, my Lord, you go beyond me.  Neither you nor I can guess that.  But
+He knows."
+
+"Yes, I suppose He knows."  But the consideration did not seem to
+comfort him as it had done before when suggested by Father Bevis.
+
+"Perhaps," said the Prior again, softly, "there was no other way for
+your Lordship to the gate of the Holy City.  He leads us by diverse
+ways; some through the flowery mead, and some over the desert sands
+where no water is.  But of all it is written, `He led them forth by the
+right way, that they might reach the haven of their desire.'  Would your
+Lordship have preferred the mead and have missed the haven?"
+
+"No," answered the Earl, firmly.
+
+"Remember that you hold God's promise that when you awake up after His
+likeness you shall be satisfied with it.  And he is not satisfied with
+his purchase who accounts it to have cost more than it was worth."
+
+"Will your figure hold if pressed further?" said the Earl, with a wintry
+smile.  "The purchase may be worth a thousand marks, but if I have but
+five hundred in the world I shall starve to death before the gem is
+mine."
+
+"No, my Lord, it will not hold.  For you cannot pay the price of that
+gem.  The cost of it was His who will keep it safe for you, so that you
+cannot fling it away in mistake or folly.  Figures must fail somewhere;
+and we want another in this case.  My Lord, you are the gem, and the
+heavenly Graver is fashioning on you the King's likeness.  Will you stay
+His hand before it is perfect?"
+
+"I would it were near perfection!" sighed the Earl.
+
+"Perhaps it is," said the Prior, gently.  "Remember, it is your Father
+who is graving it."
+
+The Earl's lip quivered.  "If one could but know when it would be done!
+If one might know that in seven years--ten years--it would be complete,
+and one's heart and brain might find rest!  But to think of its going on
+for twenty, thirty, forty--"
+
+"They will look short enough, my Lord, when they are over."
+
+"True.  But not while they are passing."
+
+"Nay, `No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous.'  Yet `faint
+not when thou art rebuked of Him.'"
+
+"It is the going on, that is so terrible!" said the Earl, almost under
+his breath.  "If one might die when one's hope dies!  Father, do you
+know anything of that?"
+
+"In this world, my Lord, I dug a grave in mine own heart for all my
+hopes, forty years ago."
+
+"And can you look back on that time calmly?"
+
+"That depends on what you mean by calmness.  Trustfully, yes;
+indifferently, no."
+
+"Yet the religious say that God requires their affections to be detached
+from the world.  That must produce deadness of feeling."
+
+"My Lord, there is such a thing as being alive from the dead.  That is
+what God requires.  If we tarry at the dying, we shall stop short of His
+perfection.  We are to be dead to sin; but I nowhere find in Scripture
+that we are to die to love and happiness.  That is man's gloss upon
+God's precept."
+
+"Is that what you teach in your valleys?"
+
+"We teach God's Word," said the Vaudois Prior.  "Alas! for the men that
+have made it void through their tradition!  `If they speak not according
+thereunto, it is because there is no light in them.'"
+
+"And you learn--" suggested the Earl in a more interested tone.
+
+"We learn that God requires of His servants that they shall overcome the
+world; and He has told us what He means by the world--`The lust of the
+flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.'  Whatever has
+become that to me, that am I to overcome, if I would reign with Christ
+when He cometh."
+
+We Protestants can hardly understand the fearful extent to which Rome
+binds the souls of her votaries.  When she goes so far--which she rarely
+does--as to hold out God's Word with one hand, she carries in the other
+an antidote to it which she calls the interpretation of the Church,
+derived from the consent of the Fathers.  That the Fathers scarcely ever
+consent to anything does not trouble her.  According to this
+interpretation, all human affection comes for monk or nun under the head
+of the lusts of the flesh.  [Note 3.] A daughter's love for her mother,
+a father's for his child, is thus branded.  From his cradle Earl Edmund
+had been taught this; was it any marvel if he found it impossible to get
+rid of the idea?  The Prior's eyes were less blinded.  He had come
+straight from those Piedmontese valleys where, from time immemorial, the
+Word of God has not been bound, and whosoever would has been free to
+slake his thirst at the pure fountain of the water of life.  Love was
+not dead in his heart, and he was not ashamed of it.
+
+"But then, Father, you must reckon all love a thing to be left behind?"
+very naturally queried the Earl.
+
+"It will not be so in Heaven," answered the Prior; "then why should it
+be on earth?  Left behind!  Think you I left behind me the one love of
+my life when I became a Bonus Homo?  I trow not.  My Lord, forty years
+ago this summer, I was a young man, just entering life, and betrothed to
+a maiden of the Val Pellice.  God laid His hand upon my hopes of earthly
+happiness, and said, `Not so!'  But must I, therefore, sweep my
+Adelaide's memory out of my heart as if I had never loved her, and hold
+it sin against God to bear her sweet face in tender remembrance?  Nay,
+verily, I have not so learned Christ."
+
+"What happened?" said the Earl.
+
+"God sent His angels for her," answered the Prior in a low voice.
+
+"Ah, but she loved you!" was the response, in a tone still lower.  The
+Earl did not know how much, in those few words, he told the Prior of
+Ashridge.
+
+"My Lord," said the Prior, "did you ever purchase a gift for one you
+loved, and keep it by you, carefully wrapped up, not letting him know
+till the day came to produce it?"
+
+The Earl looked up as if he did not see the object of the question; but
+he answered in the affirmative.
+
+"It may be," continued the Prior, "that God our Father does the same at
+times.  I believe that many will find gifts on their Father's table, at
+the great marriage-feast of the Lamb, which they never knew they were to
+have, and some which they fancied were lost irrevocably on earth.  And
+if there be anything for which our hearts cry out that is not waiting
+for us, surely He can and will still the craving."
+
+The Prior scarcely realised the effect of his words.  He saw afterwards
+that the most painful part of the Earl's grief was lightened, that the
+terrible strain was gone from his eyes.  He thanked God and took
+courage.  He did not know that he had, to some extent, given him back
+the most precious thing he had lost--hope.  He had only moved it further
+off--from earth to Heaven; and, if more distant, yet it was safer there.
+
+The Prior left the Earl alone after that interview--alone with the
+Evangelisterium and the Psalter.  The words of God were better for him
+than any words of men.
+
+He stayed at Ashridge for about a fortnight, and then, to the ecstasy of
+Sir Reginald, issued orders for return to Berkhamsted.  Only a few words
+passed between the Prior and his patron as they took leave of each other
+at the gate.
+
+"Farewell, Father, and many thanks.  You have done me good--as much good
+as man can do me now."
+
+"My Lord, that acknowledgment is trust money, which I will pay into the
+treasury of your Lord and mine."
+
+So they parted, to meet only once again.  The Vaudois Prior was to go
+down with his friend to the river-side, to the last point where man can
+go with man.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  "Je vais seul avec mon Dieu souffrir ma passion."--Bonnivard,
+Prior of Saint Victor.
+
+Note 2.  Vaudois is not really an accurate epithet, since the
+"Valley-Men" only acquired it when, in after years, ejected, from their
+old home, they sought shelter in the Pays de Vaud.  But it has come to
+be regarded as a name expressive of certain doctrines.
+
+Note 3.  "They (the Jesuits) were cut off from family and friends.
+Their vow taught them to forget their father's house, and to esteem
+themselves holy only when every affection and desire which nature had
+planted in their breasts had been plucked up by the roots."
+(_Jesuitism_, by the Reverend J.A. Wylie, Ll.D.)  This statement is
+simply a shade less true of the other monastic orders.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+FORGIVENESS NOT TO BE FORGIVEN.
+
+  "Ay, there's a blank at my right hand
+  That ne'er can be made up to me."--_James Hogg_.
+
+Before leaving Bermondsey, the Earl had accomplished one of the hardest
+pieces of work which ever fell to his lot.  This was the execution of
+the deed of separation which conveyed his legal assent to the departure
+of his wife, and assigned to her certain lands for her separate
+sustenance.  Himself the richest man in England, he was determined that
+she should remain the wealthiest woman.  He assigned to her all his
+lands in Norfolk and Suffolk, the manors of Kirketon in Lincolnshire,
+Malmesbury and Wyntreslawe in Wiltshire, and an annuity on Queenhithe,
+Middlesex--the whole sum amounting to 800 pounds per annum, which was
+equivalent to at least 15,000 pounds a year.  He reserved to himself the
+appointments to all priories and churches, and the military feofs and
+escheats.  Moreover, the Countess was not to sell any of the lands, nor
+had she the right to build castles.  So far, in all probability, any man
+would have gone.  But one other item was added, which came straight from
+the human heart of Earl Edmund, and was in the thirteenth century a very
+strange item indeed.  The Countess, it was expressly provided, should
+not waste, exile, enslave, nor destroy "the serfs on these estates."
+[Note 1.]
+
+The soul of Haman the Agagite, which had descended upon Margaret de
+Clare, fiercely resented this unusual clause.  On the same roll which
+contains the Earl's grant, in ordinary legal language--which must have
+cost him something where he records her wish, and his assent, "freely
+_during her widowhood_ to dedicate herself to the service of God,"--
+there is another document, in very extraordinary language, wherein the
+Lady Margaret recounts the wrongs which her lord is doing her in respect
+of this 800 pounds a year.  A more spiteful production was hardly ever
+penned.  From the opening address "to all who shall read or hear this
+document" to the concluding assertion that she has hereto set her seal,
+the indenture is crammed full of envy, hatred, and malice, and all
+uncharitableness.  She lets it plainly be seen that all the lands in
+Norfolk and Suffolk avail her nothing, so long as these restraining
+clauses are added to the grant.  Margaret probably thought that she was
+merely detailing her wrongs; she did not realise that she was exhibiting
+her character.  But for these four documents, the two letters, and the
+two indentures, wherein Earl and Countess have respectively "pressed
+their souls on paper," we might never have known which was to blame in
+the matter.  Out of her own mouth is Margaret judged.
+
+With amazing effrontery, and in flat contradiction not only of her
+husband's assertion, but of her own admission, the Countess commenced
+her tirade by bringing against her lord the charge of which she herself
+was guilty.  As he was much the more worthy of credit, I prefer to
+believe him, confirmed as his statement is by her own letter to the
+Pope.  She went on to detail the terms of separation, making the most of
+everything against her husband, and wound up with a sentence which must
+have pierced his heart like a poignard.  She solemnly promised never to
+aggrieve him at any time by asking him to take her back, and never to
+seek absolution [Note 2] from that oath!  In one sentence of cold,
+cruel, concentrated spite, she sarcastically swore never to demand from
+him the love for which during one and twenty years he had sued to her in
+vain.
+
+So now all was over between them.  The worst that could come had come.
+
+  "All was ended now, the hope, and the fear, and the sorrow,
+  All the aching heart, the restless unsatisfied longing,
+  All the dull deep pain, and constant anguish of patience!"
+
+There was no more left to fear, for there was nothing left to hope.
+
+The Countess, attended by Father Miles and Felicia, left Rochester in
+June for Romsey Abbey, where she solemnly assumed the veil of a black
+nun.  She was now plain Sister Margaret, and in due course of time and
+promotion, she would become Mother Margaret, and then, perhaps, Prioress
+and Abbess.  And then--her soul would be required of her.
+
+Mother Margaret!  What bitter mockery of a title for the woman who had
+deliberately flung away from her as a worthless weed the white flower of
+love which she might have cherished!
+
+Of course, the household was now scattered.  Ada had been received into
+the household of the Countess of Gloucester, the King's daughter Joan.
+Olympias was pining to return to Reginald, if she could form some idea
+in what part of the world he might be found; Clarice was awaiting her
+imperious lord's commands.  The morning after the Countess had taken her
+last farewell of them all, as they were still in this attitude of doubt
+and expectation, in walked Sir Lambert Aylmer.  He was greeted with
+delight.  Roisia was well, he reported, and sent her loving
+commendations to all; but the object of his coming was not to talk about
+Roisia.  The Earl, with Sir Reginald, was at Restormel, one of his
+Cornish castles; but in a letter received from the latter gentleman, Sir
+Lambert had been requested to inform Olympias that their master desired
+them all to repair to Berkhamsted, whither he meant to come shortly, and
+they should then hear his intentions for the future.
+
+"The saints send he mean not to be a monk!" said Olympias, shrugging her
+shoulders.
+
+But nothing was further from Earl Edmund's purpose.
+
+They reached Berkhamsted in a day or two, and to Clarice's great
+delight, found there not only Mistress Underdone and the two
+bower-maidens, but Sir Ademar and Heliet.  It was a new and pleasant
+discovery that Heliet could travel.  It had been a sort of accepted
+idea, never investigated, that her leaving Oakham was an impossibility;
+but Ademar had coaxed her to try, and Heliet was quite willing.  The
+result was that she had reached Berkhamsted in safety, to her own
+intense enjoyment; for she had never before been a mile from Oakham, and
+the discovery that she was no longer a fixture, but could accompany her
+husband wherever duty called him was to Heliet unspeakable delight.
+
+It was not till October that the Earl reached home; for he stayed at
+Bristol for the wedding of the eldest princess, Alianora, with Henri
+Duke of Barre, which took place on the twentieth of September.  The
+morning after his arrival he desired to speak with the whole of his
+household, who were to assemble in the hall for that purpose.
+
+Olympias was positive that her master was about to take the cowl.  "And
+it would be so nice, you see," she said; "just a match to the Lady."
+
+"Nice, indeed!" said Reginald, pulling a terrible face.  "Thou hast not
+spent a fortnight at Ashridge."
+
+"Well, but he would not want to make a monk of thee," answered Olympias,
+rather blankly.
+
+"He would not manage it, if he tried," responded her lord and master.
+
+When the Earl's intentions were stated, it appeared that he had no
+further occasion for the services of Sir Reginald and Olympias, and he
+had secured for them situations, if they chose to accept them, in the
+household of the royal bride.  Olympias was in ecstasies; to live in
+France was a most delicious fate in her eyes, nor did Reginald in the
+least object to it.  Filomena and Sabina were provided for with the
+Countess of Lincoln and the Princess Elizabeth, Mistress Underdone,
+Heliet, and Sir Ademar would remain at Berkhamsted.  And then the Earl,
+turning to Vivian and Clarice, requested as a favour to himself that
+they would remain also.  It was necessary to have a lady of rank--
+namely, a knight's wife--at the head of the establishment.  The Earl had
+no sister who could take that position; and his brother's widow, the
+Lady Constance d'Almayne, had preferred to return to her own home in
+Bearn rather than live in England.  Heliet might have answered, but the
+Earl felt, with his usual considerate gentleness, that her lameness
+would make it a great charge and trouble to her.  He wished Clarice to
+take it, if her husband would allow her, and was willing to continue in
+his service.
+
+"And, truth to tell," said the Earl, with a sad smile at Rosie, who was
+making frantic efforts to compass the fearful distance of three yards
+between the Earl's chair and Clarice's outstretched hand, "you have here
+a jewel which I were very loth to lose from my empty casket.  So, Sir
+Vivian, what say you?"
+
+What became of either Clarice or Rosie was a matter of very little
+importance to Vivian, for he considered them both in the light of
+encumbrances--which was rather hard on Clarice at least, as she would
+thankfully have got out of his way if duty had allowed it.  But, as he
+had once said, he knew when he was well off, and he had no wish to pass
+into the service either of a meaner nobleman or of a harder master.
+Vivian assented without a qualifying word.
+
+Thus, with Clarice, life sank back into its old groove, and time sped
+on, uneventful except for the two items that every day little Rosie grew
+in intelligence and attractiveness, and every month, as it seemed to her
+mother, the Earl grew a year older.  Clarice doubted if Rosie were not
+his sole tie to life.  She became his chief companion, and on the little
+child who was no kin of his he poured out all the rich treasure of that
+warm great heart which his own held at so small a value.  Rosie,
+however, was by no means irresponsive.  Any one seeing her would have
+taken the Earl to be her father, and Sir Vivian a stranger of whom she
+was rather frightened.
+
+The year 1294 was signalised by a remarkable action on the part of King
+Edward.  In order to defray the vast expenses of his Welsh and Breton
+wars, he took into his own hands all the priories in England, committing
+their lands and goods to the care of state officials, and allowing
+eighteenpence per week for the sustenance of each monk.  The allowance
+was handsome, but the proceeding was very like burglary.
+
+The exact religious position of Edward the First is not so easy to
+define as that of some other monarchs.  With respect to any personal and
+spiritual religion, it is, alas! only too easy.  But it is difficult to
+say how far his opposition to the Pope originated from a deliberate
+policy, well thought out beforehand, and how far from the momentary
+irritation of a crossed will.  He certainly was not the intelligent
+supporter of the Boni-Homines from personal conviction, that was to be
+found in his son, Edward the Second, or in his cousin, Edmund, Earl of
+Cornwall.  Yet he did support them to a certain extent, though more in
+the earlier part of his life than in the later.  Like many another man
+in his position, he was ready enough to assist a body of sensible
+literary reformers, but, when the doctrine which they held began to
+press personally on himself, he shrank from the touch of Ithuriel's
+spear.  That his subjects should be made better and more obedient by
+means of the Decalogue, or any other code, was a most excellent thing;
+but when the Decalogue came closer and said, "Thou shalt not," to
+himself, then it was an intrusive nuisance.
+
+In the following year, 1295, the King laid the foundation of borough
+representation, by directing the sheriffs of the various counties to
+send to Parliament, along with the knights of the shire, two deputies
+from each borough, who were to be elected by the townsmen, and empowered
+to consent, in the name of their constituents, to the decrees of the
+King and his Council.  "It is a most equitable rule," added the Monarch,
+"that what concerns all should be judged of by all."  Concerning the
+possibility of these members dissenting from his decrees, however, His
+Majesty was not quite so eloquent.  That contingency was one which a
+sovereign in the thirteenth century could scarcely be expected to take
+into his august consideration.
+
+But King Edward wanted more money, and apparently preferred to grind it
+out of his monks rather than his peasants.  He now instituted a search
+of all the monasteries in England, and commanded the confiscation of all
+cash.  The monasteries resisting the excessive taxation laid upon them,
+the King seized their lay fees.
+
+In the December of this year, Earl Edmund left Berkhamsted for Cornwall,
+taking with him Vivian, and leaving Ademar behind as the only gentleman
+in the party.  He was going on an errand unpleasant to himself, for the
+King had committed to his charge a portion of the Gascon army.  War and
+contention were altogether out of his line, yet he had no choice but to
+obey.  He joined his cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, and the Earl of
+Lincoln, in Cornwall, and together they sailed on the fifteenth of
+January 1296, from a Cornish port termed Plumhupe in the "Chronicle of
+Worcester," but not easy to identify now, unless it be taken as a
+blunder for Plymouth, and the chronicler be supposed ignorant of its
+county.  With them were twenty-five barons and a thousand knights.
+
+During the absence of the Earl, it struck his cousin, the King--for no
+other reason can be guessed--that the Earl's treasury being much better
+filled than his own, he might reasonably pay his debts out of his
+cousin's overflowing coffers.  Accordingly he sent to Berkhamsted, much
+to the dismay of the household, and coolly annexed his cousin's
+valuables to the Crown.  But Earl Edmund was a man in whose eyes gold
+was of comparatively small value, partly because he set other things
+much higher, and partly because he had always had so much of it, that
+poverty was a trouble which he was scarcely able to realise.
+
+A sad year was 1296 to the royal family of England.  The Gascon
+expedition proved so disastrous, that Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, died of
+grief and disappointment at Bayonne on the fifth of June; and the
+Scottish one, though brilliantly successful in a political light, cost
+no less, for an arrow shot at a venture, at the siege of Berwick,
+quenched the young life of Richard Plantagenet, the only brother and
+last near relation of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall.  The triumphant capture
+of the coronation chair and the Stone of Destiny and their removal from
+Dunstaffnage to England, was contrasted with a terrible famine, which so
+affected the vines in particular, that there was hardly wine enough left
+for mass.
+
+In the midst of these sharp contrasts of triumph and sorrow, Earl Edmund
+returned to England, escorting his widowed cousin Queen Blanche, and
+following the coffin of the Earl of Lancaster.  They found the King
+earnestly engaged in effecting a contract of marriage between the young
+Prince Edward and a daughter of Guy, Count of Flanders, and binding
+himself to march to Guy's assistance against the King of France.
+
+Ah, had it been God's will that the wife destined for Edward the Second
+should have been the pure, high-minded, heroic Philippine of Flanders,
+instead of the she-wolf of France, what a different history he would
+have had!
+
+For among all the princesses of the thirteenth century one of the
+fairest souls is this Flemish maiden, who literally laid down her life
+in ransom for her father.  It was not Prince Edward's fault that
+Philippine was not Queen of England.  It was the fault of the ambitious
+policy alike of King Edward and the King of France, and perhaps still
+more of his Navarrese Queen.  They did not know that they were
+sacrificing not only Philippine, but Edward.  Would they have cared much
+about it if they had done?
+
+The regalia of Scotland were solemnly offered at the shrine of Saint
+Edward on the 17th of June.  Earl Edmund was present at the ceremony,
+and after it, "weary with the storms of earth," he went home to court
+repose at Berkhamsted.
+
+It was the day after he came home, a soft, warm June day.  Clarice and
+Heliet were playing with Rosie, now a bright, lively little child of
+five years old.  In rushing away from Heliet, who was pretending to
+catch her, Rosie, to the dismay of all parties, ran straight against her
+father, who had just reached the top of the spiral staircase which led
+to their own rooms.  Vivian, never very amiable when his course was
+impeded, either by a physical or a moral hindrance, impatiently pushed
+the child on one side.  It was the wrong side.  Rosie struggled to
+recover her balance for one moment, during which her father's hand
+_might_ have grasped her, had he been quick to do it; her mother had not
+time to reach her.  Then, with an inarticulate cry for help, she went
+down the well of the staircase.
+
+Past Heliet's exclamation of horror came a sharp ringing shriek--"O
+Vivian!  Rosie!" and darting by her astounded husband, down the stairs
+fled Clarice, with a celerity that she would have thought impossible an
+hour before.
+
+Vivian's state of mind was a mixture of selfishness and horror.  He had
+not intended to hurt the child, merely to get her out of his way; but
+when selfishness and remorse struggle together, the worse of the two
+usually comes to the front.  Vivian's first articulate answer was a
+growl at his wife.
+
+"Why did you not keep her out of my way?  Gramercy, what a fuss about a
+girl!"
+
+Then he read his guilt in Heliet's eyes, and began faltering out excuses
+and asseverations that he had not meant anything.
+
+Clarice reached the foot of the stairs without heeding a word he said.
+But other hands, as tender as her own, were there before her.
+
+"Little Rosie! my poor little child!" came from Earl Edmund's gentle
+lips, as he lifted the bruised child in his arms.  Tenderly as it was
+done, Rosie could not repress a moan of pain which went to the two
+hearts that loved her.
+
+She was not killed, but she was dying.
+
+"A few hours," said the Earl's physician, instantly summoned, "a few
+hours.  There was nothing to be done.  She would very likely not suffer
+much--would hardly be conscious of pain until the end came."
+
+The Earl bore her into his own chamber, and laid her on his bed.  With
+speechless agony Clarice watched beside her.
+
+Just once Rosie spoke.
+
+"Mother, Mother, don't cry!"
+
+Clarice was shedding no tears; they would not come yet; but in Rosie's
+eyes her strained white face was an equivalent.
+
+"Mother, don't cry," said Rosie.  "You said--I asked you--why people
+died.  You said our Lord called them.  Must go--when our Lord calls."
+
+Clarice was not able to answer; but Rosie's words struck cold to her
+heart.
+
+"Must go when our Lord calls!"
+
+She could hardly pray.  What went up was not prayer, but rather a wild,
+passionate cry that this thing could not be--should not be.
+
+There were those few hours of half-consciousness, and then, just at the
+turn of the night, the Lord came and called, and Rosie heard His voice,
+and went to Him.
+
+Sir Vivian Barkeworth, during that day and night, was not pursuing the
+even tenor of his way in that state of complacent self-approval which
+was the usual attitude of his mind.  It was not that he mourned the
+child; his affections were at all times of a microscopic character, and
+the only spark of regard which he entertained for Rosie was not as his
+little child, but as his future heiress.  Nor was he at all troubled by
+the sufferings of Clarice.  Women were always crying about something;
+they were decided hindrances and vexations in a man's way; in fact, the
+existence of women at all, except to see to a man's comforts, and amuse
+his leisure, was, in Sir Vivian's eyes, an unfortunate mistake in the
+arrangements of Providence.  He mourned first the good opinion which
+people had of him, and which, by the way, was a much smaller package
+than Sir Vivian thought it; and secondly, the far more important
+disturbance of the excellent opinion which he had of himself.  He could
+not rid himself of the unpleasant conviction that a little more patience
+and amiability on his part would have prevented all this disagreeable
+affair, though he would not for the world have acknowledged this
+conviction to Clarice.  That was what he thought it--a disagreeable
+affair.  It was the purest accident, he said to himself, and might have
+happened to any one.  At the same time, something, which did not often
+trouble Vivian, deep down in his inner man, distinctly told him that
+such an accident would never have happened to the Earl or Sir Ademar.
+Vivian only growled at his conscience when it gave him that faint prick.
+He was so accustomed to bid it be quiet, that it had almost ceased to
+give him any hints, and the pricking was very slight.
+
+"A disagreeable business!" he said, inwardly; "a most disagreeable
+business.  Why did not Clarice attend to her duties better?  It was her
+duty to keep that child from bothering me.  What are women good for but
+to keep their children out of mischief, and to see that their husbands'
+paths through life are free from every thorn and pebble?"
+
+Sir Vivian had reached this point when one of the Earl's pages brought
+him a message.  His master wished his attendance in his private
+sitting-room.  Vivian inwardly anathematised the Earl, the page, Heliet
+(as a witness), Rosie (as the offender), but above all, as the head and
+front of all his misery, Clarice.  He was not the less disposed to
+anathemas when he found Sir Ademar, Heliet, Clarice, and Master Franco,
+the physician, assembled to receive him with the Earl.  It rasped him
+further to perceive that they were all exceedingly grave, though how he
+could have expected any of them to look hilarious it would be difficult
+to say.  Especially he resented the look of desolate despair in
+Clarice's eyes, and the physical exhaustion and mental agony written in
+every line of her white face.  He would not have liked to admit that he
+felt them all as so many trumpet-tongued accusers against him.
+
+"I desired you all to assemble," said the Earl, in tones as gentle as
+usual, but with an under-current of pain, "because I wish to inquire in
+what manner our poor little darling met her death.  How came she to fall
+down the staircase?"
+
+He looked at Heliet, and she was the one to reply.
+
+"It was an accident, my Lord, I think," she said.
+
+"`You think?'  Is there some doubt, then?"
+
+No one answered him but Ademar.  "Pardon me, my Lord; I was not
+present."
+
+"Then I ask one who was present.  Dame Heliet?"
+
+"I hope there is no doubt, my Lord," answered Heliet.  "I should be
+sorry to think so."
+
+The bushy eyebrows, which were the only blemish to the handsome
+Plantagenet face of the Earl, were lowered at this reply.
+
+"What am I to understand by that?" he asked.  "Did the child throw
+herself down of her own will?"
+
+"Oh, no, my Lord, no!"
+
+"Did any one push her down?"
+
+Dead silence.
+
+"Sir Ademar was not present.  Were you, Sir Vivian?"
+
+Vivian, whose face was far more eloquent in this instance than his
+tongue, muttered an affirmative.
+
+"Then you can answer me.  Did any one push her down?"
+
+Vivian's reply was unintelligible, being hardly articulate.
+
+"Will you have the goodness to repeat that, if you please?" said his
+master.
+
+In Clarice's heart a terrible tempest had been raging.  Ought she not to
+speak, and declare the fact of which she felt sure, that Vivian had not
+been intentionally the murderer of his child? that whatever he might
+have done, he had meant no more than simply to push her aside?
+Conscientiousness strove hard with bitterness and revenge.  Why should
+she go out of her way to shield the man who had been the misery of her
+life from the just penalty which he deserved for having made that life
+more desolate than ever?  She knew that her voice would be the most
+potent there--that her vote would outweigh twenty others.  The pleading
+of the bereaved mother in favour of the father of the dead child was
+just what would make its way straight to the heart of his judge.
+Clarice's own heart said passionately, No!  Rosie's dead face must stand
+between him and her for ever.  But then upon her spirit's fever fell
+calming words--words which she repeated every day of her life--words
+which she had taught Rosie.
+
+"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."
+
+If God were to forgive her as she forgave Vivian, what would become of
+her?  Would she ever see Rosie again?  And then a cry for help and
+strength to do it went up beyond the stars.
+
+The Earl was quietly waiting for the repetition of Vivian's answer.  It
+came at last--the answer--not a repetition.
+
+"Saint Mary love us, my Lord!  I never meant any harm."
+
+"You never meant!" replied a stern voice, not at all like Earl Edmund's
+gentle tones.  "Did you _do_ it?"
+
+Before Vivian could reply, to every one's astonishment, and most of all
+to his, Clarice threw herself down on her knees, and deprecatingly
+kissed the hand which rested on the arm of her master's chair.
+
+"Mercy, my good Lord, I entreat you!  It was a pure accident, and
+nothing more.  I know Sir Vivian meant no more than to push the child
+gently out of his way.  He did not calculate on the force he used.  It
+was only an accident--he never thought of hurting her.  For the sake of
+my dead darling, whom I know you loved, my gracious Lord, grant me mercy
+for her father!"
+
+The silence was broken for a moment only by Heliet's sobs.  The Earl had
+covered his face with his hands.  Then he looked into Clarice's pleading
+eyes, with eyes in which unshed tears were glistening.
+
+"Dame Clarice," said Earl Edmund in his softest tone, "_you_ wish me to
+grant Sir Vivian mercy?"
+
+"I implore it of your Lordship, for His sake to whom my child is gone,
+and hers."
+
+The Earl's eyes went to Vivian, who stood looking the picture of guilt
+and misery.
+
+"You hear, Sir Vivian?  You are pardoned, but not for your sake.  Be it
+yours to repay this generous heart."
+
+The party dispersed in a few minutes.  But when Ademar and Heliet found
+themselves alone, the former said--"Will he love her after this?"
+
+"Love her!" returned Heliet.  "My dear husband, thou dost not know that
+man.  He owes his life to her generosity, and he will never forgive her
+for it."
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  Rot. Pat., 22 Edward the First.
+
+Note 2.  The language of this sentence is remarkable:--"Jeo ou nul autre
+en moun noun purchace absolucion _ou de Apostoile ou de autre
+souerein_."  (Rot. Pat., 22 Edward the First.)
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+THE SUN BREAKS OUT.
+
+  "If from Thine ordeal's heated bars,
+  Our feet are seamed with crimson scars,
+  Thy will be done!"--Whittier.
+
+Heliet's penetration had not deceived her.  The mean, narrow, withered
+article which Vivian Barkeworth called his soul, was unable to pardon
+Clarice for having shown herself morally so much his superior.  That his
+wife should be better than himself was in his eyes an inversion of the
+proper order of things.  And as of course it was impossible that he
+should be to blame, why, it must be her fault Clarice found herself most
+cruelly snubbed for days after her interference in behalf of her
+graceless husband.  Not in public; for except in the one instance of
+this examination, where his sense of shame and guilt had overcome him
+for a moment, Vivian's company manners were faultless, and a surface
+observer would have pronounced him a model husband.  Poor Clarice had
+learned by experience that any restraint which Vivian put upon himself
+when inwardly vexed, was sure to rebound on her devoted head in the form
+of after suffering in private.
+
+To Clarice herself the reaction came soon and severely.  On the evening
+before Rosie's funeral, Heliet found her seated by the little bier in
+the hall, gazing dreamily on the face of her lost darling, with dry eyes
+and strained expression.  She sat down beside her.  Clarice took no
+notice.  Heliet scarcely knew how to deal with her.  If something could
+be said which would set the tears flowing it might save her great
+suffering; yet to say the wrong thing might do more harm than good.  The
+supper-bell rang before she had made up her mind.  As they rose Clarice
+slipped her hand into Heliet's arm, and, to the surprise of the latter,
+thanked her.
+
+"For what?" said Heliet.
+
+"For the only thing any one can do for me--for feeling with me."
+
+After supper Clarice went up to her own rooms; but Heliet returned to
+the hall where Rosie lay.  To her astonishment, she found a sudden and
+touching change in the surroundings of the dead child.  Rosie lay now
+wreathed round in white rosebuds, tastefully disposed, as by a hand
+which had grudged neither love nor labour.
+
+"Who has done this?"  Heliet spoke aloud in he surprise.
+
+"I have," said a voice beside her.  It was no voice which Heliet knew.
+She looked up into the face of a tall man, with dark hair and beard, and
+eyes which were at once sad and compassionate.
+
+"You!  Who are you?" asked Heliet in the same tone.
+
+"You may not know my name.  I am--Piers Ingham."
+
+"Then I do know," replied Heliet, gravely.  "But, Sir Piers, _she_ must
+not know."
+
+"Certainly not," he said, quietly.  "Tell her nothing; let her think, if
+she will, that the angels did it.  And--tell me nothing.  Farewell."
+
+He stooped down and kissed the cold white brow of the dead child.
+
+"That can hurt no one," said Piers, in a low voice.  "And she may be
+glad to hear it--when she meets the child again."
+
+He glided out of the hall so softly that Heliet did not hear him go, and
+only looked up and found herself alone.  She knelt for a few minutes by
+the bier and then went quietly to her own room.
+
+The next morning there were abundance of conjectures as to who could
+have paid this tender and graceful tribute.  The Earl was generally
+suspected, but he at once said that it was no doing of his.  Everybody
+was asked, and all denied it.  Father Bevis was appealed to, as being
+better acquainted with the saints than the rest of the company, to state
+whether he thought it probable that one of them had been the agent.  But
+Father Bevis's strong common sense declined to credit any but human
+hands with the deed.
+
+Clarice was one of the last to appear.  And when the sweet, fair tribute
+to her darling broke suddenly upon her sight, the result was attained
+for which all had been more or less hoping.  That touch of nature set
+the floodgates open, and dropping on her knees beside the bier, Clarice
+poured forth a rain of passionate tears.
+
+When all was over, and Rosie had been hidden away from sight until the
+angel-trump should call her, Clarice and Heliet went out together on the
+Castle green.  They sat down on one of the seats in an embrasure.  The
+Earl, with his thoughtful kindness, seeing them, sent word to the
+commandant to keep the soldiers within so long as the ladies chose to
+stay there.  So they were left undisturbed.
+
+Heliet was longing intensely to comfort Clarice, but she felt entirely
+at a loss what line to take.  Clarice relieved her perplexity by being
+the first to speak.
+
+"Heliet!" she said, "what does God mean by this?"
+
+"I cannot tell, dear heart, except that He means love and mercy.  `All
+the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth unto the lovers of His will and
+testimony.'  Is not that enough?"
+
+"It might be if one could see it."
+
+"Is it not enough, without seeing?"
+
+"O Heliet, Heliet, she was all I had!"
+
+"I know it, beloved.  But how if He would have thee to make Him all thou
+hast?"
+
+"Could I not have loved God and have had Rosie?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said Heliet, gently.
+
+"I hope He will take me soon," said Clarice.  "Surely He can never leave
+me long now!"
+
+"Or, it may be, make thee content to wait His will."
+
+Clarice shook her head, not so much with a negative air as with a
+shrinking one.  Just in that first agony, to be content with it seemed
+beyond human nature.
+
+Heliet laid her hand on that of her friend.  "Dear, would you have had
+Rosie suffer as you have done?"
+
+For a moment Clarice's mental eyes ran forward, over what would most
+likely, according to human prevision, have been the course of Rosie's
+after life.  The thought came to her as with a pang, and grew upon her,
+that the future could have had no easy lot in store for Vivian
+Barkeworth's daughter.  He would have disposed of her without a thought
+of her own wish, and no prayers nor tears from her would have availed to
+turn him from his purpose.  No--it was well with the child.
+
+"Thou art right," she said, in a pained voice.  "It is better for Rosie
+as it is.  But for me?"
+
+"Leave that with God.  He will show thee some day that it was better for
+thee too."
+
+Clarice rose from her seat; but not till she had said the one thing
+which Heliet had been hoping that she would not say.
+
+"Who could have laid those flowers there?  Heliet, canst thou form any
+idea?  Dost thou think it _was_ an angel?"
+
+Heliet had an excuse in settling her crutches for delaying her reply for
+a moment.  Then she said in a low tone, the source of whose tenderness
+it was well that Clarice could not guess--"I am not sure, dear, that it
+was not."
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+If Clarice's sufferings had been passive before, they began to be active
+now.  Vivian made her life a torment to her by jealousy on the one hand,
+and positive cruelty on the other; yet his manners in public were so
+carefully veiled in courtesy that not one of her friends guessed how
+much she really suffered.  As much time as she could she spent in her
+oratory, which was the only place where Vivian left her at peace, under
+a vague idea that it would bring him ill luck to interrupt any one's
+prayers.  Unfortunately for Clarice, he had caught a glimpse of Piers,
+and, having no conscientiousness in his own composition, he could not
+imagine it in that of another.  That Piers should be at Berkhamsted
+without at least making an effort to open communication with Clarice,
+was an idea which Vivian would have refused to entertain for a moment.
+For what other earthly purpose could he be there?  Vivian was a man who
+had no faith in any human being.  In his belief, the only possible means
+to prevent Clarice from running away with Piers was to keep her either
+in his sight or locked up when out of it.  The idea of trusting to her
+principles would have struck him as simply ridiculous.
+
+Sir Piers, however, had completely disappeared, as completely as though
+he had never been seen.  And after a while Vivian grew more confident,
+and not so particular about keeping the key turned.  Clarice knew
+neither why he locked her in, nor why he gave over doing so.  Had she
+had a suspicion of the reason, her indignation would not have been
+small.
+
+Public affairs meanwhile maintained their interest.  The King marched
+his army to Scotland, and routed Wallace's troops in the battle of
+Falkirk; but his success was somewhat counterbalanced by the burning of
+Westminster Palace and Abbey before he left home.  It was about this
+time that Piers Gavestone began to appear at Court, introduced by his
+father with a view to making his fortune; and to the misfortune of the
+young Prince Edward, their musical tastes being alike, they became fast
+friends.  The Prince was now only fourteen years of age; and, led by
+Gavestone, he was guilty--if indeed the charge be true--of a mischievous
+boyish frolic, in "breaking the parks" of the Bishop of Chester, and
+appropriating his deer.  The boy was fond of venison, and he was still
+more fond of pets; but neither of these facts excused the raid on the
+Bishop of Chester, who chose to take the offence far more seriously than
+any modern bishop would be likely to do, and carried his complaint to
+the King.  The royal father, as his wont was, flew into a passion, and
+weighted the boys' frolic with the heavy penalty of banishment for
+Gavestone, and imprisonment for the Prince.  In all probability young
+Edward had never looked on his action in any other light than as a piece
+of fun.  Had his father been concerned about the sin committed against
+God--exactly the sin of a boy who robs an orchard--he might, with less
+outward severity, have produced a far more wholesome impression on his
+son; but what he considered appears to have been merely the dignity of
+the Prince, which was outraged by the act of the boy who bore the title.
+A quiet, grave exhortation might have done him good, but imprisonment
+did none, and left on many minds the impression that the boy had been
+hardly used.
+
+One striking feature in the conduct of Edward the Second is the
+remarkable meekness and submission with which he bore his father's angry
+outbursts and severe punishments--often administered for mere youthful
+follies, such as most fathers would think amply punished by a strong
+lecture, and perhaps a few strokes of the cane.  Edward the First seems
+to have been one of those men who entirely forget their own childhood,
+and are never able in after life to enter into the feelings of a child.
+
+His Majesty, however, had other matters to attend to beside the
+provocation received from his heir; for in the month of September
+following (1299) he was married at Canterbury to the Princess Marguerite
+of France.  It was a case approaching that of Rachel and Leah, for it
+was the beautiful Princess Blanche for whom the King had been in treaty,
+and Marguerite was foisted on him by a process of crafty diplomacy not
+far removed from treachery.  However, since Marguerite, though not so
+fair as her sister, proved the better woman of the two, the King had no
+reason to be disappointed in the end.
+
+The Council of Regency established in Scotland, discontented with
+Edward's arbitration, referred the question of their independence to the
+Pope, and that wily potentate settled the matter in his own interests,
+by declaring Scotland a fief of the Holy See.  The King was still
+warring in that vicinity; the young Queen was left with her baby boy in
+Yorkshire to await his return.
+
+It was a hot July day, and Vivian, who highly disapproved of the
+stagnation of Berkhamsted, declared his intention of going out to hunt.
+People hunted in all weathers and seasons in the Middle Ages.  Ademar
+declined to accompany him, and he contented himself by taking two of the
+Earl's squires and a handful of archers as company.  The Earl did not
+interfere with Vivian's proceedings.  He was quite aware that the quiet
+which he loved was by no means to everybody's taste; and he left his
+retinue at liberty to amuse themselves as they pleased.
+
+Vivian did not think it necessary to turn the key on Clarice; but he
+gave her a severe lecture on discreet behaviour which astonished her,
+since her conscience did not accuse her of any breach of that virtue,
+and she could not trace the course of her husband's thoughts.  Clarice
+meekly promised to bear the recommendation in mind; and Vivian left her
+to her own devices.
+
+The day dragged heavily.  Mistress Underdone sat with Heliet and Clarice
+at work; but not much work was gone through, for in everybody's opinion
+it was too hot to do anything.  The tower in which they were was at the
+back of the Castle, and looked upon the inner court.  The Earl's
+apartments were in the next tower, and there, despite the heat, he was
+going over sundry grants and indentures with Father Bevis and his
+bailiff, always considering the comfort and advantage of his serfs and
+tenants.  The sound of a horn outside warned the ladies that in all
+probability Vivian was returning home; and whether his temper were good,
+bad, or indifferent was likely to depend on the condition of his
+hunting-bags.  Good, was almost too much to hope for.  With a little
+smothered sigh Clarice ventured to hope that it might not be worse than
+indifferent.  Her comfort for the next day or two would be much affected
+by it.
+
+They looked out of the window, but all they saw was Ademar crossing the
+inner court with rapid steps, and disappearing within the Earl's tower.
+There was some noise in the outer court, but no discernible solution of
+it.  The ladies went back to their work.  Much to their surprise, ten
+minutes later, the Earl himself entered the chamber.  It was not at all
+his wont to come there.  When he had occasion to send orders to Clarice
+concerning his household arrangements, he either sent for her or
+conveyed them through Vivian.  These were the Countess's rooms which
+they were now occupying, and the Earl had never crossed the threshold
+since she left the Castle.
+
+They looked up, and saw in his face that he had news to tell them.  And
+all at once Clarice rose and exclaimed--"Vivian!"
+
+"Dame, I grieve to tell you that your knight has been somewhat hurt in
+his hunting."
+
+Clarice was not conscious of any feeling but the necessity of knowing
+all.  And that she had not yet been told all she felt certain.
+
+"Much hurt?" she asked.
+
+"I fear so," answered the Earl.
+
+"My Lord, will you tell me all?"
+
+The Earl took her hand and looked kindly at her.  "Dame, he is dead."
+
+Mistress Underdone raised her hands with an exclamation of shocked
+surprise, to which Heliet's look of horror formed a fitting corollary.
+Clarice was conscious only of a confused medley of feelings, from which
+none but a sense of amazement stood out in the foreground.  Then the
+Earl quietly told her that, in leaping a wide ditch, Vivian had been
+thrown from his horse, and had never spoken more.
+
+No one tried to comfort Clarice.  Pitifully they all felt that comfort
+was not wanted now.  The death of Rosie had been a crushing blow; but
+Vivian's, however sudden, could hardly be otherwise than a relief.  The
+only compassion that any one could feel was for him, for whom there
+was--
+
+  "No reckoning made, but sent to his account
+  With all his imperfections on his head."
+
+The very fact that she could not regret him on her own account lay a
+weight on Clarice's conscience, though it was purely his own fault.
+Severely as she tried to judge herself, she could recall no instance in
+which, so far as such a thing can be said of any human sinner, she had
+not done her duty by that dead man.  She had obeyed him in letter and
+spirit, however distasteful it had often been to herself; she had
+consulted his wishes before her own; she had even honestly tried to love
+him, and he had made it impossible.  Now, she could not resist the
+overwhelming consciousness that his death was to her a release from her
+fetters--a coming out of prison.  She was free from the perpetual drag
+of apprehension on the one hand, and of constantly endeavouring on the
+other to please a man who was determined not to be pleased.  The spirit
+of the uncaged bird awoke within her--a sense of freedom, and light, and
+rest, such as she had not known for those eight weary years of her
+married slavery.
+
+Yet the future was no path of roses to the eyes of Clarice.  She was not
+free in the thirteenth century, in the sense in which she would have
+been free in the nineteenth, for she had no power to choose her own lot.
+All widows were wards of the Crown; and it was not at all usual for the
+Crown to concern its august self respecting their wishes, unless they
+bought leave to comply with them at a very costly price.  By a singular
+perversion of justice, the tax upon a widow who purchased permission to
+remarry or not, at her pleasure, was far heavier than the fine exacted
+from a man who married a ward of the Crown without royal licence.  The
+natural result of this arrangement was that the ladies who were either
+dowered widows or spinster heiresses very often contracted clandestine
+marriages, and their husbands quietly endured the subsequent fine and
+imprisonment, as unavoidable evils which were soon over, and well worth
+the advantage which they purchased.
+
+It seemed, however, as if blessings, no less than misfortunes, were not
+to come single to Clarice Barkeworth.  A few weeks after Vivian's death,
+the Earl silently put a parchment into her hand, which conveyed to her
+the information that King Edward had granted to his well-beloved cousin,
+Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, the marriage of Clarice, widow of Vivian
+Barkeworth, knight, with the usual proviso that she was not to marry one
+of the King's enemies.  This was, indeed, something for which to be
+thankful.  Clarice knew that her future was as safe in her master's
+hands as in her own.
+
+"Ah!" said Heliet, when that remark was made to her, "if we could only
+have felt, dear heart, that it was as safe in the hands of his Master!"
+
+"Was I very faithless, Heliet?" said Clarice, with tears in her eyes.
+
+"Dear heart, no more than I was!" was Heliet's answer.
+
+"But has it not occurred to thee, Heliet, now--why might I not have had
+Rosie?"
+
+"I know not, dear Clarice, any more than Rosie knew, when she was a babe
+in thine arms, why thou gavest her bitter medicine.  Oh, leave all that
+alone--our Master understands what He is doing."
+
+It was the middle of September, and about two months after Vivian's
+death.  Clarice sat sewing, robed in the white weeds of widowhood, in
+the room which she usually occupied in the Countess's tower.  The
+garments worn by a widow were at this time extremely strict and very
+unbecoming, though the period during which they were worn was much less
+stringent than now.  From one to six months was as long as many widows
+remained in that condition.  Heliet had not been seen for an hour or
+more, and Mistress Underdone, with some barely intelligible remarks very
+disparaging to "that Nell," who stood, under her, at the head of the
+kitchen department, had disappeared to oversee the venison pasty.
+Clarice was doing something which she had not done for eight years,
+though hardly aware that she was doing it--humming a troubadour song.
+Getting past an awkward place in her work, words as well as music became
+audible--
+
+  "And though my lot were hard and bare,
+  And though my hopes were few,
+  Yet would I dare one vow to swear
+  My heart should still be true."
+
+"Wouldst thou, Clarice?" asked a voice behind her.
+
+Clarice's delicate embroidery got the worst of it, for it dropped in a
+heap on the rushes, and nobody paid the slightest attention to it for a
+considerable time.  Nor did any one come near the room until Heliet made
+her appearance, and she came so slowly, and heralded her approach by
+such emphatic raps of her crutches on the stone floor, that Clarice
+could scarcely avoid the conclusion that she was a conspirator in the
+plot.  The head and front of it all, however, was manifestly Earl
+Edmund, who received Sir Piers with a smile and no other greeting--a
+distinct intimation that it was not the first time they had met that
+day.
+
+The wedding--which nobody felt inclined to dispute--was fixed for the
+fifteenth of October.  The Earl wished it to take place when he could be
+present and give away the bride, and he wanted first a fortnight's
+retreat at Ashridge, to which place he had arranged to go on the last
+day of September.  Sir Piers stepped at once into his old position, but
+the Earl took Ademar with him to Ashridge.  He gave the grant of
+Clarice's marriage to Piers himself, in the presence of the household,
+with the remark:--
+
+"It will be better in your hands than mine; and there is no time like
+the present."
+
+Into Clarice's hand her master put a shining pile of gold for the
+purchase of wedding garments and jewellery.
+
+"I am glad," he said, "that your path through life is coming to the
+roses now.  I would hope the thorns are over for you--at least for some
+time.  There have been no roses for me; but I can rejoice, I hope, with
+those for whom they blossom."
+
+And so he rode away from Berkhamsted, looking back to smile a farewell
+to Heliet and Clarice, as they stood watching him in the gateway.  Long
+years afterwards they remembered that kind, almost affectionate, smile.
+
+As the ladies turned into their own tower, and began to ascend the
+staircase--always a slow process with Heliet--Clarice said, "I cannot
+understand why our Lord the Earl has such a lonely and sorrowful lot."
+
+"Thou wouldst like to understand everything, Clarice," returned Heliet,
+smiling.
+
+"I would!" she answered.  "I can understand my own troubles better, for
+I know how much there is in me that needs setting right; but he--why he
+is almost an angel already."
+
+"Perhaps he would tell thee the same thing," said Heliet.  "I am afraid,
+dear heart, if thou hadst the graving of our Lord's gems, thou wouldst
+stop the tool before the portrait was in sufficient relief."
+
+"But when the portrait _is_ in sufficient relief?" answered Clarice,
+earnestly.
+
+"Ah, dear heart!" said Heliet, "neither thine eyes nor mine are fine
+enough to judge of that."
+
+"It seems almost a shame to be happy when I know he is not," replied
+Clarice, the tears springing to her eyes; "our dear master, who has been
+to me as a very angel of God."
+
+"Nay, dear, he would wish thee to be happy," gently remonstrated Heliet.
+"I believe both thou and I are to him as daughters, Clarice."
+
+"I wish I could make him happy!" said Clarice, as they turned into her
+rooms.
+
+"Ask God to do it," was Heliet's response.
+
+They both asked Him that night.  And He heard and answered them, but, as
+is often the case, not at all as they expected.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+IN THE CITY OF GOLD.
+
+  "I am not eager, strong,
+  Nor bold--all that is past;
+  I am ready not to do,
+  At last--at last.
+
+  "My half-day's work is done,
+  And this is all my part:
+  I give a patient God
+  My patient heart."
+
+Vespers were over at Ashridge on the last day of September, the evening
+of the Earl's arrival.  He sat in the guest-chamber, with the Prior and
+his Buckinghamshire bailiff, to whom he was issuing instructions with
+respect to some cottages to be built for the villeins on one of his
+estates.  The Prior sat by in silence, while the Earl impressed on the
+mind of his agent that the cottages were to be made reasonably
+comfortable for the habitation of immortal souls and not improbably
+suffering bodies.  When at last the bailiff had departed, the Prior
+turned to his patron with a smile.  "I would all lay lords--and
+spiritual ones too--were as kindly thoughtful of their inferiors as your
+Lordship."
+
+"Ah, how little one can do at the best!" said the Earl.  "Life is full
+of miseries for these poor serfs; shall we, who would follow Christ's
+steps, not strive to lighten it?"
+
+"It is very truth," said the Prior.
+
+"Ay, and how short the boundary is!" pursued the Earl.  "`Man is
+ignorant what was before him; and what shall be after him, who can tell
+him?'  It may be, the next lord of these lands will be a hard man, who
+will oppress his serfs, or at any rate take no care for their comfort.
+Poor souls! let them be happy as long as they can."
+
+"When I last saw your Lordship, you seemed to think that short boundary
+too long for your wishes."
+
+"It is seven years since that," answered the Earl.  "It hardly seems so
+far away now.  And lately, Father--I scarcely can tell how--I have
+imagined that my life will not be long.  It makes me the more anxious to
+do all I can ere `the night cometh in which no man can work.'"
+
+The Prior looked critically and anxiously at his patron.  The seven
+years which he had passed in sorrowful loneliness had aged him more than
+seven years ought to have done.  He was not fifty yet, but he was
+beginning to look like an old man.  The burden and heat of the day were
+telling on him sadly.
+
+"Right, my Lord," replied the Prior; "yet let me beg of your Lordship
+not to over-weary yourself.  Your life is a precious thing to all
+dependent on you, and not less to us, your poor bedesmen here."
+
+"Ah, Father! is my life precious to any one?" was the response, with a
+sad smile.
+
+"Indeed it is," answered the Prior earnestly.  "As your Lordship has
+just said, he who shall come after you may be harsh and unkind, and your
+poor serfs may sorely feel the change.  No man has a right to throw away
+life, my Lord, and you have much left to live for."
+
+Perhaps the Earl had grown a little morbid.  Was it any wonder if he
+had?  He shook his head.
+
+"We have but one life," continued the Prior, "and it is our duty to make
+the best of it--that is, to do God's will with it.  And when it is God's
+will to say unto us, `Come up higher,' we may be sorry that we have
+served Him no better, but not, I think, that we have given no more time
+to our own ease, nor even to our own sorrows."
+
+"And yet," said the Earl, resting his head upon one hand, "one gets
+very, very tired sometimes of living."
+
+"Cannot we trust our Father to call us to rest when we really need it?"
+asked the Prior.  "Nor is it well that in looking onward to the future
+glory we should miss the present rest to be had by coming to Him, and
+casting all our cares and burdens at His feet."
+
+"Does He always take them?"
+
+"Always--if we give them.  But there is such a thing as asking Him to
+take them, and holding them out to Him, and yet keeping fast hold of the
+other end ourselves.  He will hardly take what we do not give."
+
+The Earl looked earnestly into his friend's eyes.
+
+"Father, I will confess that these seven years--nay! what am I saying?
+these eight-and-twenty--I have not been willing that God should do His
+will.  I wanted my will done.  For five-and-forty years, ever since I
+could lisp the words, I have been saying to Him with my lips, _Fiat
+voluntas tua_.  But only within the last few days have I really said to
+Him in my heart, Lord, have Thy way.  It seemed to me--will you think it
+very dreadful if I confess it?--that I wanted but one thing, and that it
+was very hard of God not to let me have it.  I did not say such a thing
+in words; I could talk fluently of being resigned to His will, but down
+at the core of my heart I was resigned to everything but one, and I was
+not resigned to that at all.  And I think I only became resigned when I
+gave over trying and working at resignation, and sank down, like a tired
+child, at my Father's feet.  But now I am very tired, and I would fain
+that my Father would take me up in His arms."
+
+The Prior did not speak.  He could not.  He only looked very sorrowfully
+into the worn face of the heart-wearied man, with a conviction which he
+was unable to repress, that the time of the call to come up higher was
+not far away.  He would have been thankful to disprove his conclusion,
+but to stifle it he dared not.
+
+"I hope," said the Earl in the same low tone, "that there are quiet
+corners in Heaven where weary men and women may lie down and rest a
+while at our Lord's feet.  I feel unfit to take a place all at once in
+the angelic choir.  Not unready to praise--I mean not that--only too
+weary, just at first, to care for anything but rest."
+
+There were tears burning under the Prior's eyelids; but he was silent
+still.  That was not his idea of Heaven; but then he was less weary of
+earth.  He felt almost vexed that the only passage of Scripture which
+would come to him was one utterly unsuited to the occasion--"They rest
+not day nor night."  Usually fluent and fervent, he was tongue-tied just
+then.
+
+"Did Christ our Lord need the rest of His three days and nights in the
+grave?" suggested the Earl, thoughtfully.  "He must have been very weary
+after the agony of His cross.  I think He must have been very tired of
+His life altogether.  For was it not one passion from Bethlehem to
+Calvary?  And He could hardly have been one of those strong men who
+never seem to feel tired.  Twice we are told that He was weary--when He
+sat on the well, and when He slept in the boat.  Father, I ought to ask
+your pardon for speaking when I should listen, and seeming to teach
+where I ought to be taught."
+
+"Nay, my Lord, say not so, I pray you."  The Prior found his voice at
+last.  "I have learned to recognise my Master's voice, whether I hear it
+from the rostrum of the orator or from the lowly hovel of the serf.  And
+it is not the first time that I have heard it in yours."
+
+The Earl looked up with an expression of surprise, and then shook his
+head again with a smile.
+
+"Nay, good Father, flatter me not so far."
+
+He might have added more, but the sound of an iron bar beaten on a
+wooden board announced the hour of supper.  The Earl conversed almost
+cheerfully with the Prior and his head officers during supper; and
+Ademar remarked to the Cellarer that he had not for a long while seen
+his master so like his old self.
+
+The first of October rose clear and bright.  At Berkhamsted, the ladies
+were spending the morning in examining the contents of a pedlar's
+well-stocked pack, and buying silk, lawn, furs, and trimmings for the
+wedding.  At Ashridge, the Earl was walking up and down the Priory
+garden, looking over the dilapidations which time had wrought in his
+monastery, and noting on his tables sundry items in respect of which he
+meant to repair the ravages.  At Romsey, Mother Margaret, in her black
+patched habit and up-turned sleeves, was washing out the convent
+refectory, and thereby, she fervently hoped, washing her sins out of
+existence--without a thought of the chivalrous love which would have set
+her high above all such menial labour, and would never have permitted
+even the winds of heaven to "visit her cheek too roughly."  Did it never
+occur to her that she might have allowed the Redeemer of men to "make
+her salvation" for her, and yet have allowed herself to make her
+husband's life something better to him than a weary burden?
+
+The day's work was over, and the recreation time had come.  The Prior of
+Ashridge tapped at the door of the guest-chamber, and was desired to
+enter.
+
+He found the Earl turning over the leaves of his Psalter.
+
+"Look here, Father," said the latter, pointing out the fifteenth verse
+of the ninetieth Psalm.
+
+"We are glad for the days wherein Thou didst humiliate us; the years
+wherein we have seen evil."
+
+"What does that mean?" said the Earl.  "Is it that we thank God for the
+afflictions He has given us?  It surely does not mean--I hope not--that
+our comfort is to last just as long as our afflictions have lasted, and
+not a day longer."
+
+"Ah, my Lord, God is no grudging giver," answered the Prior.  "The verse
+before it, methinks, will reply to your Lordship--`we exult and are glad
+all our days.'  All our earthly life have we been afflicted; all our
+heavenly one shall we be made glad."
+
+"Glad!  I hardly know what the word means," was the pathetic reply.
+
+"You will know it then," said the Prior.
+
+"You will--but shall I?  I have been such an unprofitable servant!"
+
+"Nay, good my Lord, but are you going to win Heaven by your own works?"
+eagerly demanded the Bonus Homo.  "`Beginning in the spirit, are ye
+consummated in the flesh?'  Surely you have not so learned Christ.  Hath
+He not said, `Life eternal give I to them; and they shall not perish for
+ever, and none shall snatch them out of My hand'?"
+
+"True," said the Earl, bowing his head.
+
+But this was Vaudois teaching.  And though Earl Edmund, first of all men
+in England, had drunk in the Vaudois doctrines, yet even in him they had
+to struggle with a mass of previous teaching which required to be
+unlearned--with all that rubbish of man's invention which Rome has built
+up on the One Foundation.  It was hard, at times, to keep the old ghosts
+from coming back, and troubling by their shadowy presence the soul whom
+Christ had brought into His light.
+
+There was silence for a time.  The Earl's head was bent forward upon his
+clasped hands on the table, and the Prior, who thought that he might be
+praying, forbore to disturb him.  At length he said, "My Lord, the
+supper-hour is come."
+
+The Earl gave no answer, and the Prior thought he had dropped asleep.
+He waited till the board was struck with the iron bar as the signal for
+supper.  Then he rose and addressed the Earl again.  The silence
+distressed him now.  He laid his hand upon his patron's shoulder, but
+there was no response.  Gently, with a sudden and terrible fear, he
+lifted the bowed head and looked into his face.  And then he knew that
+the weary heart was glad at last--that life eternal in His beatific
+presence had God given to him.  From far and near the physicians were
+summoned that night, but only to tell the Prior what he already knew.
+They stood round the bed on which the corpse had been reverently laid,
+and talked of his mysterious disease in hard words of sonorous Latin.
+It would have been better had they called it in simple English what it
+was--a broken heart.  Why such a fate was allotted to one of the best of
+all our princes, He knows who came to bind up the broken-hearted, and
+who said by the lips of His prophet, "Reproach hath broken mine heart."
+
+Ademar was sent back to Berkhamsted with the woeful news.  There was
+bitter mourning there.  It was not, perhaps, in many of the household,
+unmixed with selfish considerations, for to a large proportion of them
+the death of their master meant homelessness for the present, and to
+nearly all sad apprehensions for the future.  Yet there was a great deal
+that was not selfish, for the gentle, loving, humane, self-abnegating
+spirit of the dead had made him very dear to all his dependants, and
+more hearts wept for him than he would ever have believed possible.
+
+But there was one person in especial to whom it was felt the news ought
+to be sent.  The Prior despatched no meaner member of the Order, but
+went himself to tell the dark tidings at Romsey.
+
+He pleaded hard for a private interview with the Countess, but the
+reigning Abbess of Romsey was a great stickler for rule, and she decided
+that it was against precedent, and therefore propriety, that one of her
+nuns should be thus singled out from the rest.  The announcement must be
+made in the usual way, to the whole convent, at vespers.
+
+So, in the well-known tones of the Prior of Ashridge,--some time the
+Earl's confessor, and his frequent visitor,--with the customary request
+to pray for the repose of the dead, to the ears of Mother Margaret, as
+she knelt in her stall with the rest, came the sound of the familiar
+name of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall.
+
+Very tender and pathetic was the tone in which the intimation was given.
+The heart of the Prior himself was so wrung that he could not imagine
+such a feeling as indifference in that of the woman who had been the
+dearest thing earth held for that dead man.  But if he looked down the
+long row of black, silent figures for any sign or sound, he looked in
+vain.  There was not even a trembling of Mother Margaret's black veil as
+her voice rose untroubled in the response with all the rest--
+
+  "_O Jesu dulcis!  O Jesu pie!
+  O Jesu, Fili Maria!
+  Dona eis requiem_."
+
+In the recreation-time which followed, the Prior sought out Mother
+Margaret.  He found her without difficulty, seated on a form at the side
+of the room, talking to a sister nun, and he caught a few words of the
+conversation as he approached.
+
+"I assure thee, Sister Regina, it is quite a mistake.  Mother Wymarca
+told me distinctly that the holy Mother gave Sister Maud an unpatched
+habit, and it is all nonsense in her to say there was a patch on the
+elbow."
+
+The Prior bit his lips, but he restrained himself, and sat down,
+reverently saluted by both nuns as he did so.  Was she trying to hide
+her feelings? thought he.
+
+"Sister Margaret, I brought you tidings," he said, as calmly as was in
+him.
+
+The nun turned upon him a pair of cold, steel-blue eyes, as calm and
+irresponsive as if he had brought her no tidings whatever.
+
+"I heard them, Father, if it please you.  Has he left any will?"
+
+The priest-nature in the Prior compelled him officially to avoid any
+reprehension of this perfect monastic calm; but the human nature, which
+in his case lay beneath it, was surprised and repelled.
+
+"He has left a will, wherein you are fully provided for."
+
+"Oh, that is nice!" said Mother Margaret, in tones of unquestionable
+gratulation.  "And how much am I to have?  Of course I care about it
+only for the sake of the Abbey."
+
+The Prior had his private ideas on that point; for, as he well knew, the
+vow of poverty was somewhat of a formality in the Middle Ages, since the
+nun who brought to her convent a title and a fortune was usually not
+treated in the same manner as a penniless commoner.
+
+"The customary dower to a widow, Sister."
+
+"Do you mean to say I am only to have my third?  Well, I call that
+shameful!  And so fond of me as he always professed to be!  I thought he
+would have left me everything."
+
+The Prior experienced a curious sensation in his right arm, which, had
+Mother Margaret not been a woman, or had he been less of a Christian and
+a Church dignitary, might have resulted in the measuring of her length
+on the floor of the recreation-room.  But she was totally unconscious of
+any such feeling on his part.  Her heart--or that within her which did
+duty for one--had been touched at last.
+
+"Well, I do call it disgraceful!" she repeated.
+
+"And is that all?" asked the Prior involuntarily, and not by any means
+in consonance with his duty as a holy priest addressing a veiled nun.
+But priests and nuns have no business with hearts of any sort, and he
+ought to have known this as well as she did.
+
+"All?" she said, with a rather puzzled look in the frosty blue eyes.  "I
+would it had been a larger sum, Father; for the convent's sake, of
+course."
+
+"And am I to hear no word of regret, Sister, for the man to whom you
+were all the world?"
+
+This was, of course, a most shocking speech, considering the speaker and
+the person whom he addressed; but it came warm from that inconvenient
+heart which had no business to be beneath the Prior's cassock.  Mother
+Margaret was scandalised, and she showed it in her face, which awoke her
+companion to the fact that he was not speaking in character.  That a
+professed nun should be expected to feel personal and unspiritual
+interest in an extern! and, as if that were not enough, in a man!
+Mother Margaret's sense of decorum was quite outraged.
+
+"How could such thoughts trouble the blessed peace of a holy sister?"
+she wished to know.  "Pardon me, Father; I shall pray for his soul, of
+course.  What could I do more?"
+
+And the Prior recognised at last that to the one treasure of that dead
+man's heart, the news he brought was less than it had been to him.
+
+He bit his lips severely.  It was all he could do to keep from telling
+her that the pure, meek, self-abnegating soul which had passed from
+earth demanded far fewer prayers than the cold, hard, selfish spirit
+which dwelt within her own black habit.
+
+"It is I who require pardon, Sister," he said, in a constrained voice.
+"May our Lord in His mercy forgive us all!"
+
+He made no further attempt to converse with Mother Margaret.  But, as he
+passed her a few minutes later, he heard that she and Sister Regina had
+gone back to the previous subject, which they were discussing with some
+interest in their tones.
+
+"O woman, woman!" groaned the Prior, in his heart; "the patch on Sister
+Maud's elbow is more to thee than all the love thou hast lost.  Ah, my
+dear Lord! it is not you that I mourn.  You are far better hence."
+
+From which speech it will be seen that the Bonus Homo was very far from
+being a perfect monk.
+
+The actions of Mother Margaret admirably matched her words.  She gave
+herself heart and soul to the important business of securing her
+miserable third of her dead lord's lands and goods.  Not till they were
+safe in her possession did she allow herself any rest.
+
+Did the day ever come when her feelings changed?  During the ten years
+which she outlived the man who had loved her with every fibre of his
+warm, great heart, did her heart ever turn regretfully, when Abbesses
+were harsh or life was miserable, to the thought of that tender,
+faithful love which, so far as in it lay, would have sheltered her life
+from every breath of discomfort?  Did she ever in all those ten years
+whisper to herself--
+
+  "Oh, if he would but come again,
+  I think I'd vex him so no more!"
+
+Did she ever murmur such words as--
+
+  "I was not worthy of you, Douglas,
+  Not half worthy the like of you!"
+
+...words which, honestly sobbed forth in very truth, would have been far
+nearer real penitence than all the "acts of contrition" which passed her
+lips day by day.
+
+God knoweth.  Men will never know.  But all history and experience tend
+to assure us that women such as Margaret de Clare usually die as they
+have lived, and that of all barriers to penitence and conversion there
+is none so hard to overthrow as indulged malice and deliberate hardening
+of the heart against the love of God and man.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+There was not, as Piers and Clarice had feared there might have been,
+any misfortune to them in the way of preventing their marriage.  King
+Edward had great respect for justice and honour, and finding that his
+cousin had, though without legal formalities, granted Clarice's marriage
+to Piers, he confirmed the grant, and Father Bevis married them quietly
+in the chapel of Berkhamsted Castle, without any festivity or
+rejoicings, for the embalmed body of the master to whom they owed so
+much lay in state in the banquet-hall.  It was a mournful ceremony,
+where--
+
+  "The cheers that had erst made the welkin ring
+  Were drowned in the tears that were shed for the King."
+
+Clarice and Piers made no attempt to obtain any further promotion.  They
+retired to a little estate in Derbyshire, which shortly afterwards fell
+to Piers, and there they spent their lives, in serving their generation
+according to the will of God, often brightened by visits from Ademar and
+Heliet, who had taken up their abode not far from them in the
+neighbouring county of Rutland.  And as time went on, around Clarice
+grew up brave sons and fair daughters, to all of whom she made a very
+loving mother; but, perhaps, no one was ever quite so dear to her heart
+as the star which had gleamed on her life the brighter for the
+surrounding darkness, the little white rosebud which had been gathered
+for the garden of God.
+
+  "In other springs her life might be
+  In bannered bloom unfurled;
+  But never, never match her wee
+  White Rose of all the world."
+
+It was not until the spring which followed his death was blooming into
+green leaves and early flowers that the coffin of Edmund, Earl of
+Cornwall, was borne to the magnificent Abbey of Hales in
+Gloucestershire, founded by his father.  There they laid him down by
+father and mother--the grand, generous, spendthrift Prince who had so
+nearly borne the proud title of Caesar Augustus, and the fair, soft,
+characterless Princess who had been crowned with him as Queen of the
+Romans.  For the Prince who was laid beside them that Easter afternoon,
+the world had prepared what it considers a splendid destiny.  Throne and
+diadem, glory and wealth, love and happiness, were to have been his, so
+far as it lay in the world's power to give them; but on most of all
+these God had laid His hand, and forbidden them to come near the soul
+which He had marked for His own.  For him there was to be an
+incorruptible crown, but no corruptible; the love of the Lord that
+bought him, but not the love of the woman on whom he set his heart.
+Now--whatever he may have thought on earth--now, standing on the sea of
+glass, and having the harp of God, he knows which was the better
+portion.
+
+He wore no crown; he founded no dynasty; he passed away, like a name
+written in water, followed only by the personal love of a few hearts
+which were soon dust like him, and by the undying curses and calumnies
+of the Church which he had done his best to purify against her will.
+But shall we, looking back across the six centuries which lie between us
+and him who brought Protestantism into England--shall we write on his
+gravestone in the ruined Abbey of Hales, "This man lived in vain?"
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Forgotten Hero, by Emily Sarah Holt
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