She lifted up her soul as she turned away.

"Lord, they cannot bar Thee out of Arundel Castle! go with this child of many prayers! Teach him Thyself, and then he will be taught: save him, and he will be saved! Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He,—in heaven and in the earth and in the sea, and in all deep places. Let them curse, but bless Thou!"

And so, having touched the hem of Christ's garment, Guenllian went in peace.

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT CAME OF SELF-WILL.

"Are not the worst things that befal us here,

That seem devoid of meaning, or contain

The least of love and beauty, those from which

The heavenly Alchemist extracts the gold

That makes us rich?"

—REV. HORATIUS BONAR.

It was not in the old Castle in Sussex, the ancient home of the Earls of Arundel, that little Roger Mortimer found his home at first. The Earl was about to reside for a time in Town. His city residence, Bermondsey House, was situated on Fish Wharf, near to that delicious part of the City of London now known as Billingsgate. It may be safely asserted that no member of the English peerage would be likely to select this locality in the present day for the site of his town house. But, five hundred years ago, matters were very different, and the banks of the river near London Bridge were pleasant and airy places. This was, in fact, a fashionable part of the City: and here the premier Earl of England held his court, almost rivalling that of the sovereign in costliness and magnificence. Little Roger, for the past year a comparatively lonely child, found himself suddenly transported into the midst of a large and lively family. Liveliness was not, indeed, a characteristic of the Countess, a near relative of Roger, for her father and his grandfather were sons of one mother. She was a calm, imperturbable specimen of humanity, who spoke, moved, and thought, in a slow, self-complacent style, which would have sent an impatient person into a passion.

The Earl was almost the antipodes of his wife. The Fitzalans of Arundel were anything but faultless persons as a rule, but too much slowness and caution were assuredly not among their failings. He was an extremely clever man, gifted with much originality of conception, as well as talent in execution: not unamiable to those whom he loved, but capable of intense harshness, and even cruelty, where he hated. Energetic even to passion in everything which he did, a "whole man" to the one thing at the one moment, capable of seeing very far into that which he chose to see, but of being totally blind to that which he did not. Richard, Earl of Arundel, was one of the last men to whom such a charge as Roger Mortimer ought to have been entrusted.

The family of this dissimilar pair amounted to five in number when little Roger joined them. These were, Richard, a youth of sixteen years; John, aged fourteen; Elizabeth, aged ten, and already married to Roger's cousin, William de Montacute; Alice, aged five; and Joan, aged three. Both the boys were too old for Roger to feel much sympathy with them, or they with him; while the girls, both as being younger, and as being girls, were in his eyes beneath his notice. He therefore remained a speckled bird in the family, instead of amalgamating with it; a fact which drew him closer, despite all inequalities of position, to the one boy whom he did like, Lawrence Madison, the only one of his old acquaintances who was permitted to accompany him to Bermondsey House. The Earl had meant to cut all the old ties; but little Roger pleaded hard for the retention of Lawrence, alleging truthfully that he played at soldiers with him. It was just because this one item was so utterly insignificant that the Earl permitted it to escape the general doom: and thereby, little as he knew it, rendered inoperative all the rest of his cautionary arrangements. It was Lawrence who helped Roger more than any one else to keep true to his grandmother's early teaching. When Roger went astray, Lawrence either refused aid altogether, or went only so far as he thought right, and then stood like a granite rock, immovable by commands or entreaties. When the former was less obstinate, and more capable of being influenced, the look of earnest remonstrance in Lawrence's eyes or even his disapproving silence, were often enough to turn away the versatile and sensitive mind of Roger from a project of doubtful character. The little servant did not appear to care for hard epithets, passionate words, or even blows, to which naughty Roger sometimes descended when his temper got the better of him: but he did care deeply to see his little master do right and grow wiser. The influence of the young Arundels—which was small, since Roger never liked any of them—was often bad, and always doubtful: but Lawrence could be relied upon as a force ever on the side of right, or at least of that which he believed to be so.

It was Alice, the little girl of five years old, who had been solemnly affianced to young Roger Mortimer. She was the only one of the children who in character resembled her mother, nor was this resemblance perfect. It made her physically idle, and mentally dull; but it did not save her from that moral intensity which was the characteristic of the Arundel family. In her, instead of expending itself in mental and physical energy as it did with most of them, it formed a most unhappy combination with those features inherited from her mother. Passionate with a passion which was weakness and not strength, with an energy which was destructive and not constructive, with a capacity for loving which centred in herself, and a perversity of will which only served to lead astray, she went to wreck early, a boat with no compass and no rudder. It was well for Roger Mortimer that however men might think to order his future life, God had not destined Alice of Arundel for him.