and fellowship in
faith, had effected a complete revolution in the feelings of Constance
towards her mother-in-law.

"O Mother, Mother!" she sobbed; "what shall I do without you!"

"My child," answered Elizabeth, "had the heavenly Master not seen that
thou shouldst well do without me, He had left me yet here."

"You yourself said, Mother, that He had left me but Him and you!"

"Ay, dear daughter; and yet He hath left thee Himself. Every hour He
shall be with thee; and every hour of thy life moreover shall be an hour
the less betwixt thee and me."

The last thing that they heard her murmur, which had reference to that
land whither she was going, was--"Neither schulen they die more."

They laid her in the family vault at Tewkesbury Abbey; and once more
there was mourning at Cardiff.

It was only just begun when news came of another death, far more
unexpected than hers. Richard of Conisborough and Anne Mortimer were
already the parents of a daughter; and two months after the death of the
Lady Le Despenser a son was born, who was hereafter to become the father
of all the future kings of England. And while the young mother lay
wrapped in her first tender gladness over her new treasure, God called
her to come away to Him. So she left the little children who would
never call her "mother," left the husband who was all the world to her;
and--fragile White Rose as she was--Anne Mortimer "perished with the
flowers." She died "with all the sunshine on her," aged only twenty-one
years. Perhaps those who stood round her coffin thought it a very sad
and strange dispensation of Providence. But we, who know what lay
hidden in the coming years, can see that God's time for her to die was
the best and kindest time. And indications are not quite wanting,
slight though they may be, that Richard of Conisborough was not a
political, but a religious Lollard, and that this autumn journey of Anne
Mortimer to the unknown land may have been a triumphal entry into the
City of God.

The news that Constance had of set purpose cast in her lot with the
Lollards was not long in travelling to Westminster. And she soon found
that the lot of a Lollard was no bed of roses. In his anger, Henry of
Bolingbroke departed from his usual rule of rigid justice, and revoked
the grant which Constance may be said to have purchased with her heart's
blood. Her favourite Richard, now a fine youth of sixteen, was taken
from her, and his custody, possess