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Note 1. "Thou art my portion, O Lord."--Psalm 119, verse 57.

Note 2. "My beloved is mine."--Canticles 2, verse 16.

Note 3. Two anecdotes may be given which illustrate this in a manner
almost comical; the first has been published more than once, the latter
has not to my knowledge. When his youngest daughter Elizabeth was
married to the Earl of Hereford in 1302, the King, annoyed by some
unfortunate remark of the bride, snatched her coronet from her head and
threw it into the fire, nor did the Princess recover it undamaged. In
1305, writing to John de Fonteyne, the physician of his second wife,
Marguerite of France, who was then ill of small-pox, the King warns him
not on any account to allow the Queen to exert herself until she has
completely recovered, "and if you do," adds the monarch in French, of
considerably more force than elegance, and not too suitable for exact
quotation, "you shall pay for it!"

CHAPTER FOUR.

WAITING AND WEARY.

"Oh! for the strength of God's right hand! the way is hard and dreary,
Through Him to walk and not to faint, to run and not be weary!"

E.L. Marzials.

We left the Royal party in conversation in the chamber at Westminster.

"Have you quite resolved, Sire, to expel all the Jews from England?"
asked De Valence.

"Resolved? Yes; I hope it is half done," replied the King. "You are
aware, fair Uncle, that our Commons voted us a fifteenth on this
condition?"

"No, I did not hear that," said De Valence.

"How many are there of those creatures?" inquired Lancaster.

"How should I know?" returned Edward, with an oath. "I only know that
the Chancellor said the houses and goods were selling well to our
profit."

"Fifteen thousand and sixty, my Lord of Surrey told me," said Lancaster.
"I doubted if it were not too high a computation; that is why I asked."

"Oh, very likely not," responded Edward, carelessly. "There are as many
of them as gnats, and as much annoyance."

"Well, it is a pious deed, of course," said Lancaster, stroking his
moustache, not in the dilettante style of De Echingham, but like a man
lost in thought. "It seems a pity, though, for the women and children."

"My cousin of Lancaster, I do believe, sings _Dirige_ over the chickens
in his barnyard," sneered De Valence.

Lancaster looked up with a good-tempered smile.

"Does my fair Uncle never wish for the day when the lion shall eat straw
like