Her manner when she arrived at home was particularly affectionate, both to the Dowager and her children, of whom little Richard was now eight years old, while Isabel had just reached four. The keen eyes of the old lady—much sharper mentally than physically—soon discerned the presence of some new element in her daughter-in-law’s mind. She closely questioned Maude as to what had happened, or was about to happen; and after a minute’s hesitation, Maude told her all she knew and feared. For some time after receiving this information, Elizabeth Le Despenser sat gazing uneasily from the lattice, with unwontedly idle hands.
“Sister’s son unto our adversary!” she murmured to herself at last. “Whither shall this tend? Verily, there is One stronger than Thomas de Arundel. Is He leading us blind by a way that we know not?—for in very sooth I cannot discern the way. If so it be, then—Lord, lead Thou on!”
Kent paid his visit to Cardiff in the winter, accompanied by Constance’s pet brother, Lord Richard of Conisborough, who had been promoted to his father’s old dignity of Earl of Cambridge. It was the first time that the Dowager had seen either; and she afterwards communicated her impressions of the pair to Maude, as they sat together at work.
“As touching the Lord Richard, he is gent and courteous enough; he were no ill companion, an’ he knew his own mind a little better. Mayhap three of him, or four, might make a man amongst them.”
For Cambridge, though in a much fainter degree, reflected his father’s character by finding it very difficult to say no.
“And what thinks your Ladyship of my Lord of Kent?” asked Maude with some anxiety.
The Dowager shook the loose threads from her work with a peculiar little laugh.
“Marry, my maid, what think I of my Lord of Kent his barber, and his tailor?” said she; “for they made my Lord of Kent betwixt them. He is not a man of God’s making.”
“But think you, Madam, he is to be trusted or no?”
“Trusted!—for what? To oil his golden locks, and perfume well his sudary, and have his sleeves of the newest cutting? Ay, forsooth, and that right worthily!”