mmoned all her nuns and drew them up in state, and Sister
Mabel, who carried the tidings to the guests, asked whether they would
not join in receiving him.

'We are king's daughters,' said Jean haughtily.

'But he is a Prince of the Church and an aged man,' said Lady Drummond,
who had already risen, and was adjusting that headgear of Eleanor's that
never would stay in its place. And her matronly voice acted upon Jean,
so as to conquer the petulant pride, enough to make her remember that
the Lady of Glenuskie was herself a Stewart and king's grandchild, and
moreover knew more of courts and their habits than herself.

So down they went together, in time to join the Prioress on the steps,
as the attendants of the great stately, princely Cardinal Bishop began
to appear. He did not come in state, so that he had only half a dozen
clerks and as many gentlemen in attendance, together with Sir Patrick
and his two sons.

Few of the Plantagenet family had been long-lived, and Cardinal Beaufort
was almost a marvel in the family at seventy. Much evil has been said
and written of him, and there is no doubt that he was one of those
mediaeval prelates who ought to have been warriors or statesmen, and
that he had been no model for the Episcopacy in his youth. But though
far from having been a saint, it would seem that his unpopularity in his
old age was chiefly incurred by his desire to put an end to the long and
miserable war with France, and by his opposition to a much worse man,
the Duke of Gloucester, whose plausible murmurs and amiable manners
made him a general favourite. At this period of his life the old man had
lived past his political ambitions, and his chief desire was to leave
the gentle young king freed from the wasting war by a permanent peace,
to be secured by a marriage with a near connection of the French
monarch, and daughter to the most honourable and accomplished Prince in
Europe. That his measures turned out wretchedly has been charged upon
his memory, and he has been supposed guilty of a murder, of which he was
certainly innocent, and which probably was no murder at all.

He had become a very grand and venerable old man, when old men were
scarce, and his white hair and beard (a survival of the customs of the
days of Edward III) contrasted well with his scarlet hat and cape, as he
came slowly into the cloistered court on his large sober-paced Spanish
mule; a knight and the chaplain of the convent assisted him fr