Goldwell was not in spirit a persecutor: he had been possessed of very high influence in affairs of State, and was a learned and liberal-minded man. He who was not to be deceived by courtiers, could be commanded even by his niece, and yet be blind to her power. He was proud of her, but it was because she was proud of herself, and would brook no equal. Her pride was so great as to be proverbial; and most persons were glad when Alice De Clinton was not at the palace. She would yield to none--not even to her uncle, the opinion she had once adopted. With neither priest nor squire of inferior degree would she ever exchange a word, though he might be a visitor in the palace, receiving the hospitality of the Bishop. Her hauteur was so great that none but a lord must speak to her; or if they did dare to do so, her uncommon expression of disdain was enough to silence any humble-minded man. Her bounty to the poor was never bestowed from pity. She gave the boon, whatever it might chance to be, as a gift after partaking of high mass; but none could possibly feel that relief of spirit which acknowledged the blessing was due to the giver, since she would make every one to understand he was much more blessed in receiving than she was in bestowing. Alice De Clinton gave with such haughtiness as to make the gift painful; so much so, that whenever she visited Goldwell Hall, in the neighborhood of Ipswich, it was called by the poor _Cold Hall_, so stiff, so benumbing was the influence of her miscalled charity. To the palace of Wykes, in that day, came many of the unfortunate, who, in the previous wars of the Roses, and in foreign as well as domestic broils, had been reduced to become objects of bounty. House, home, board, and lodging, the weary pilgrim and broken-down stranger would always find at the hospitable palace. Those were days at least of generosity in this respect, whatever pride or superstition might be connected therewith; and, singular as the custom would now appear, the Bishop never sat down to his meal at mid-day without the company of every stranger in the palace. Alice had been an inmate of De Freston's castle with her uncle in the early days of Ellen's childhood; and such was the meekness of the daughter of De Freston that even the proud Alice condescended to look upon her as a friend; but it was certainly as a friend beneath her, one to whom she might show a kind of patronizing air without any compromise of her dignity.