r Edgar, virtually ruled
England. And in his rage, and remembering how he had dealt with a
previous boy king, whose beautiful young wife he had hounded to her
dreadful end, he charged Elfrida with having instigated her husband's
murder, and commanded the king to put that woman away. This roused the
man and passionate lover, and the tiger in the man, in Edgar, and the
wise and subtle-minded ecclesiastic quickly recognised that he had set
himself against one of a will more powerful and dangerous than his own.
He remembered that it was Edgar, who, when he had been deprived of his
abbey and driven in disgrace from the land, had recalled and made him so
great, and he knew that the result of a quarrel between them would be a
mighty upheaval in the land and the sweeping away of all his great
reforms. And so, cursing the woman in his heart and secretly vowing
vengeance on her, he was compelled in the interests of the Church to
acquiesce in this fresh crime of the king.

VII

Eight years had passed since the king's marriage with Elfrida, and the
one child born to them was now seven, the darling of his parents,
Ethelred the angelic child, who to the end of his long life would be
praised for one thing only--his personal beauty. But Edward, his
half-brother, now in his thirteenth year, was regarded by her with an
almost equal affection, on account of his beauty and charm, his devotion
to his step-mother, the only mother he had known, and, above all, for
his love of his little half-brother. He was never happy unless he was
with him, acting the part of guide and instructor as well as playfellow.

Edgar had recently completed one of his great works, the building of
Corfe Castle, and now whenever he was in Wessex preferred it as a
residence, since he loved best that part of England with its wide moors
and hunting forests, and its neighbourhood to the sea and to Portland
and Poole water. He had been absent for many weeks on a journey to
Northumbria, and the last tidings of his movements were that he was on
his way to the south, travelling on the Welsh border, and intended
visiting the Abbot of Glastonbury before returning to Dorset. This
religious house was already very great in his day; he had conferred many
benefits on it, and contemplated still others.

It was summer time, a season of great heats, and Elfrida with the two
little princes often went to the coast to spend a whole day in the open
air by the sea. Her favourite