ed mistress. And
when she knelt down to tell her beads that night, a very strange and
terrible prayer lingered on her lips the last and most earnestly of all.
It was, that she might never again see her father's face. She felt
that had she done so, the spirit of the prophetess might have seized
upon her as upon Joan; that, terrified as she had always been of him,
she should now have stood up before him and have cursed him to his face.

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Note 1. Edmund Fitzalan was premier Earl as Earl of Surrey, which title
he acquired by his marriage with Alesia, sister and heir of John de
Warrenne, last Earl of Surrey of the original male line.

Note 2. Probably owing to the great mortality among the nobles caused
by the French war, a man who survived fifty was regarded as very old in
the reign of Edward the Third.

Note 3. This is Froissart's account of the events, and his dates have
been mainly followed. Many writers give a varying narrative, stating
that the King and Earl did reach Wales, and were taken there in a wood.
Their dates are also about a month later. The inquisitions of the
Despensers, as is usual in the case of attainted persons, do not give
the date of death.

Note 4. The castle was granted to Edmund Earl of Kent, brother of
Edward the Second; and there, on his attainder and execution, four years
later, his widow and children were arrested.

Note 5. The earldom did not return to the Despenser family until 1397,
when it was conferred on the great-grandson of the attainted Earl.

Note 6. Earl Richard, his son, was beheaded in London, in the spring of
1397; Earl Thomas, his grandson, fell at Agincourt, October 13, 1415.

CHAPTER SIX.

ELAINE.

"No has visto un nino, que viene
A dar un doblon que tiene,
Porque le den una flor?"

Lope de Vega.

Philippa determined to return home by way of Sempringham. She could not
have given any very cogent reason, except that she wished to see the
place where the only peaceful days of her mother's life had been passed.
Perhaps peace might there come to her also; and she was far enough from
it now. It would have been strange indeed if peace had dwelt in a heart
where was neither "glory to God" nor "good-will to men." And while her
veneration for her mother's memory was heightened by her aunt's
narrative, her feeling towards her father, originally a shrinking
timidity, had change