er
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.

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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