and
travails be now over!"

"It is well, wife, that God loveth her better than thou," was the
answer. "He will not leave his jewel but half polished, because the
sound of the cutting grieveth thine ears."

"But how could she bear aught more?"

"Dear heart! how know we what any man can bear--aye, even our own
selves? Only God knoweth; and we trust Him. The heavenly Goldsmith
breaketh none of His gems in the cutting."

The doors of the prison in Windsor Castle were opened that spring to
release two of the state prisoners. The dangerous prisoner, Edmund Earl
of March, remained in durance; and his bright little brother Roger had
been set free already, by a higher decree than any of Henry of
Bolingbroke. The child died in his dungeon, aged probably about ten
years. Now Anne and Alianora were summoned to Court, and placed under
the care of the Queen. They were described by the King as "deprived of
all their relatives and friends." They were not quite that; but in so
far as they were, he was mainly responsible for having made them so.

The manner in which King Henry provided the purchase-money required by
the Duke of Milan for Lucia is amusing for its ingenuity. The sum
agreed upon was seventy thousand florins; and the King paid it out of
the pockets of five of his nobles. One was his own son, Thomas Duke of
Clarence; the second and third were husbands of two of Kent's sisters--
Sir John Neville and Thomas Earl of Salisbury--the latter being the son
of the murdered Lollard; the fourth was Lord Scrope, whose character
appears to have been simple to an extreme; and the last was assuredly
never asked to consent to the exaction, for he was the hapless March,
still close prisoner in Windsor Castle.

In the summer, Constance received a grant of all her late husband's
lands. The Court was very gay that summer with royal weddings. The
first bride was Constance's young stepmother, the Duchess Joan of York,
who bestowed her hand on Lord Willoughby de Eresby: the second was the
King's younger daughter, the Princess Philippa, who was consigned to the
ungentle keeping of the far-off King of Denmark. Richard of
Conisborough was selected to attend the Princess to Elsinore; but he was
so poor that the King was obliged to make all the provision he required
for the journey. It was not his own fault that his purse was light: his
godfather, King Richard, had left him a sufficient competence; but the
grants of Richard of Borde