Time forbids us to dwell at any length upon the few short weeks spent by Shanno at her new-found mother's side in London, or upon the marked notice and favour shown her by the king and queen, whose great kindness but strengthened the love and devotion she had ever secretly cherished for them--for the king more especially, whose beautiful yet sad countenance and melancholy eyes haunted her with a peculiar fascination. And also she at that time met for the first time the great Archbishop Laud, whose name was already but too sore a source of strife, and with him his learned chaplain, young Master Jeremy Taylor, on whom, for his wisdom and holiness of life, she looked with awe and reverence, and, for his great friendship with Percival Vere, with a certain tenderness of spirit which she could not disguise from herself. Many a time she listened with a beating heart to his warm praises of his friend, sometimes timidly venturing herself to draw him into conversation upon her father's beloved chaplain, and ever finding herself pleasingly rewarded for such boldness by the great affection with which Master Taylor spoke of his friend, dwelling enthusiastically upon the wonderful purity and spotlessness of his life from boyhood, and upon those charms of manner which, combined with a strong will and high moral purpose, as well as with learned parts and wondrous eloquence of speech, had won for him the love and esteem of all his fellows, among whom, said Master Taylor, he had ever, as it were, diffused a purer atmosphere than that breathed by ordinary men, and shown forth a noble ideal of living, which, if they sometimes ridiculed, they could but secretly reverence. And to such talk of him, whose image she ever cherished in her pure girlish heart's inmost shrine, the Earl of Bryn Afon's unknown daughter listened with glowing cheeks and brightly-shining eyes, and Master Taylor, reading in those liquid depths the secret which they unconsciously betrayed, and which he was perhaps the quicker to apprehend because of his own newly-found joy in a good wife's love, rejoiced in the goodness of his heart that so good a gift might likewise be in store for Percival as the love of this wondrously fair maiden, the Lady Bryn Afon's cherished companion, in whose countenance goodness and purity of soul were evenly blended with beauty of feature, and in whose mind, as he wrote to his friend Master Vere, all fair graces were mingled, the striving of each for the mastery adding piquancy to the one harmonious whole. We can also make but passing mention of the one happy day Primrose spent in her father's company on his return to town with the Black Horseman,--happy indeed, yet her pride and joy in him were mingled with bitter sadness in spite of the thankfulness and pleasure with which she received his great kindnesses towards herself, and saw the evident marks of tender love, existing despite all the strange circumstances of their lives, between himself and her mother.