It was one constant
funeral wail. On the 24th of March, 1394, her aunt Constanca, Duchess
of Lancaster, died of the plague at Leicester; in the close of May, of
the same disease, the beloved Lollard Queen; and on the first of July
her cousin, Mary Countess of Derby. Constance grew so restless, that
when orders came for her husband to attend the King at Haverford, where
he was about to embark on his journey to Ireland, she determined to go
there also.

"I can breathe better any whither than at Cardiff!" she said
confidentially to Maude.

But in truth it was not Cardiff from which he fled, but her own restless
spirit. The vine had been transplanted, and its tendrils refused to
twine round the strange boughs offered for its support.

The Princess found her father at Haverford, but the pair were very shy
of one another. The Duke was beginning to discover that he had made a
blunder, that his fair young wife's temper was not all sunshine, and
that his intended plaything was likely to prove his eventual tyrant.
Constance, on her part, felt a twinge of conscience for her pettish
desertion of him in his old age; for to her apprehension he was now an
old man: and she was privately conscious that she could not honestly
plead any preconsideration for her husband. She had merely pleased
herself, both in going and staying, and she knew it. But she spent her
whole life in gathering apples of Sodom, and flinging away one after
another in bitter disappointment. Yet the next which offered was always
grasped as eagerly as any that had gone before it.

Perhaps it was due to some feeling of regret on the Duke's part that he
invited his daughter and son-in-law to return with him. Constance
accepted the offer readily. The Duke was Regent all that winter, during
the King's absence in Ireland; and, as was usual, he took up his
residence in the royal Palace of Westminster. Constance liked her visit
to Westminster; she was nearly as tired of Langley as of Cardiff, and
this was something new. And a slight bond of union sprang up between
herself and her husband; for she made him, as well as Maude, the
confidant of all her complaints and vexations regarding her step-mother.
Le Despenser was satisfied if she would make a friend of him about
anything, and he was anxious to shield her from every annoyance in his
power.

It appeared to Maude, who had grown into a quiet, meditative woman, that
the feeling of the Duchess towards her ste