rimson silk deeply edged with ermine, low in the neck, but with
long sleeves to the wrist. She wore the dovecote, and over it an open
circlet of gold and gems, to mark her royal rank.

At the threshold of Constance's bower, after the ceremony, the old Lady
Le Despenser met the Earl and Countess of Kent.

"The Lord bless you, fair daughter!" she said, laying her hands on the
bowed head of the bride.

But a little later the same evening, she said unexpectedly, "Ay me! I
am but a blind thing, Dame Maude; yet this match of the Lady Custance
doth sorely misgive me."

At the other end of the room, the Duke of York was saying, "You will
visit me at Langley, fair sister, this coming spring?"

"With a very good will, Ned."

It only remains to be noted that Father Ademar officiated at both
marriages; and that as in those days people went home for the honeymoon,
not away from it, the Earl and Countess set out from Cardiff in a few
days for Brockenhurst, the birthplace and favourite residence of the
young Earl. The children were left with their grandmother; they were to
follow, in charge of Maude and Bertram, to Langley, where their mother
intended to rejoin them. Maude continued to be bowerwoman to her
mistress; but some of the more menial functions usually discharged by
one who filled that office, were now given to a younger girl, who bore
the name of Eva de Scanteby.

It was in the evening of a lovely spring day that Constance, accompanied
by Kent, rejoined Maude and her children at Langley.

CHAPTER NINE.

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT.

"He that hath a thousand friends hath not a friend to spare,
And he that hath one enemy shall find him everywhere."

On the evening of Constance's arrival at Langley, two men sat in close
conference in the Jerusalem Chamber of the Palace of Westminster. One
of them was a priest, the other a layman. The first priest, and the
first layman, in the realm; for the elder was Thomas de Arundel,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the younger was Henry of Bolingbroke, King
of England.

The Archbishop was a tall, stout, portly man, with a round, fair, fat
face, on which sat an expression of extreme self-complacency. A fine
forehead, both broad and high, though slightly too retreating,
surmounted a pair of clear, bright grey eyes, a well-formed nose, and
lips in which there was no weakness, but they were just a shade too
smiling for sincerity. Though his age was only fifty-one, his hair w