d a life among the folk who loved him that any fear of worry
in great places was too much for him. And yet sometimes he could not
help a little prick of thought about his duty to his daughter. Hence it
came that common sense was driven wild by conscience, as forever
happens with the few who keep that gadfly. Six great horses, who knew
no conscience but had more fleshly tormentors, were ordered out, and the
journey began, and at last it ended.

Everything in London now was going almost anyhow. Kind and worthy people
scarcely knew the way to look at things. They desired to respect the
king and all his privilege, and yet they found his mind so wayward that
they had no hold of him.

The court, however, was doing its best, from place to place in its
wanderings, to despise the uproar and enjoy itself as it used to do.
Bright and beautiful ladies gathered round the king, when the queen was
gone, persuading him and one another that they must have their own way.

Of the lords who helped these ladies to their strong opinions there was
none in higher favour with the queen and the king himself than the young
Lord Auberley. His dress was like a sweet enchantment, and his tongue
was finer still, and his grace and beauty were as if no earth existed.
Frida was a new thing to him, in her pure simplicity. He to her was such
a marvel, such a mirror of the skies, as a maid can only dream of in the
full moon of St. John.

Little dainty glance, and flushing, and the fear to look too much, and
the stealthy joy of feeling that there must be something meant, yet the
terror of believing anything in earnest and the hope that, after all,
there may be nought to come of it; and when this hope seems over true,
the hollow of the heart behind it, and the longing to be at home with
anyone to love oneself--time is wasted in recounting this that always
must be.

Enough that Frida loved this gallant from the depths of her pure heart,
while he admired and loved her to the best of his ability.

CHAPTER III.

The worthy baron was not of a versatile complexion. When his mind was
quite made up he carried out the whole of it. But he could not now make
up his mind upon either of two questions. Of these questions one was
this--should he fight for the king or against him, in the struggle now
begun? By hereditary instincts he was stanch for liberty, for letting
people have their own opinions who could pay for them. And about
religious matters and the r