"Never," Mary told herself, with a look at little Will, at toddling Gilbert at her feet, with a thought for the unborn child soon to add another inmate to the household--"not with my consent. When the time comes they are grown, what will be left for them?" She was bitter about the secrecy of those debts incurred unknown to her. And yet to set herself against John! Wandering with the children down the garden-path, idly she plucked a red rose and laid its cheek against a white one already in her hand. A kingdom divided against itself. She sighed, then became conscious of the boy pulling at her sleeve. "Tell us a story, Mother," he was begging, "a story with fighting an' a sword." "A story, Will, with fighting and a sword?" Never yet could she say the child nay. She held her roses from her and pondered while she gazed. And her heart was bitter. "There was an Arden, child, whose blood is in your veins, who fought and fell at Barnet, crying shrill and fierce, 'Edward my King, St. George and victory!' And the young Edward, near him as he fell, called to a knight to lay hand to his heart, for Edward knew and loved him well, and had received of him money for a long-forgotten debt which young Edward's father would not press. So Edward called to a knight to lay hand upon his heart. But he was dead. 'A soldier and a knight,' said he who was afterward the King, 'and more--an honest man.'" Then she pushed the boy aside and going swiftly to the house ran to her room; and face laid in her hands she wept. What had she said in the bitterness of her feeling? What--even to herself--had she said? Yet money must be had, she admitted that. But to encumber the estate! She shrank from her own people knowing; she had inherited more of her father's estate than her sisters, and there had been feeling, and her brothers-in-law, Lambert and Webb, would be but upheld in their prophecies about her husband's capacity to care for her property. She would not have them know. "Talk it over first with your father, John," she told her husband, "or with your brother Henry. Let us not rush blindly into this thing. You had promised anyhow, you remember, to take Will out to the sheep-shearing." VII