e nap. Now King Charles had himself expelled my father from
his dominions, for some old grudge that I never rightly understood; yet
never a word said he when he came back without licence. Marry, but our
old King Edward should not have treated thus the unlicenced return of a
banished man! He would have been hung within the week, with him on the
throne. But King Charles was not cut from that stuff. He let my father
alone till the Queen came over--our Queen Isabel, his sister, I mean--
and then who but he in all the French Court! Howbeit, they kept things
pretty quiet for that time; nought came to King Edward's ears, and she
did her work and went home. Forsooth, it was sweet work, for she
treated with her brother as the sister of France, and not as the wife of
England. King Charles had taken Guienne, and she, sent to demand
restitution, concluded a treaty of peace on his bare word that it should
be restored, with no pledge nor security whatever: but bitter complaints
she laid of the King her husband, and the way in which he treated her.
Well, it is true, he did not treat her as I should have done in his
place, for he gave in to all her whims a deal too much, where a good
buffet on her ear should have been ever so much more for her good--and
his too, I will warrant. Deary me, but if some folks were drowned, the
world would get along without them! I mention no names (only that weary
Nichola, that is for ever mashing my favourite things). So the Queen
came home, and all went on for a while.

But halt, my goose-quill! thou marchest too fast. Have back a season.

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Note 1. This is the probable order of birth. The date assigned to the
birth of Agnes is fictitious, but that of her husband is taken from his
_Probatio Aetatis_.

Note 2. July 8th, 1317; this is about the probable time. The Countess
is supposed to be writing in the spring of 1348.

Note 3. This word was then used of both sexes, and was the proper
designation of the son of a prince or peer not yet arrived at the age of
knighthood.

PART TWO, CHAPTER 2.

THE LADY OF LUDLOW.

"Toil-worn and very weary--
For the waiting-time is long;
Leaning upon the promise--
For the Promiser is strong."

So were we children left alone in the Castle of Ludlow, and two weary
months we had of it. Wearier were they by far than the six that ran
afore them, when our mother was th