"Then my Lord of Lancaster--why not he?" "He did." "Ay, at long last, when two years had run: wherefore not long ere that? The dust, trow, was not in his eyes." "Good wife, no man's eyes are blinder than his which casts the dust into his own. My Lord of Lancaster had run too long with the hounds to be able all suddenly to turn him around and flee with the hare." "Soothly, I know he met the Queen on her landing, and likewise had the old King in his ward: but--" "I reckon, Sissot, there were wheels within wheels. We need not judge my Lord of Lancaster. He did his duty at last. And mind thou, between him and his duty to King Edward the father, stood his brother's scaffold." "Which never man deserved richer." "Not a doubt thereof: but man may scarce expect his brother to behold it." "Then," said I, "my Lord Zouche of Mortimer--but soothly he was cousin to the traitor. Jack, I never could conceive how it came about that he ever wedded the Lady Alianora. One of the enemies of her own husband, and she herself set prisoner in his kinsman's keeping, and to wed her gaoler's cousin, all against the King's pleasure and without his licence--canst solve the puzzle?" "I can tell thee why he wed her, as easy as say `twice two be four.' She was co-heir of the earldom of Gloucester, and his sword was nearhand his fortune." "Then wherefore wed she him?" "Kittle [ticklish, delicate] ground, Sissot, for man to take on him to account for the doings of woman. I might win a clap to mine ears, as like as not." "Now, Jack, thou wist well I never demean me so unbuxomly. Tell me thy thought." "Then I think," saith he, "that the Lady Alianora La Despenser was woman of that manner that fetch their souls from the vine. They must have somewhat to lean on. If an oak or a cedar be nigh, good: but if no, why then, a bramble will serve their turn. The one thing that they cannot do is to stand alone. There be not only women of this fashion; there be like men, but too many. God help them, poor weak souls! The woman that could twine round the Lord Zouche the tendrils torn from Sir Hugh Le Despenser must have been among the very weakest of women." "It is sore hard," said I, "to keep one from despising such weakness." "It is full hard, soothly. I know but one way--to keep very near to Him that never spurned the weakest that prayed His help, and that tholed weakness amidst other meeknesses [humiliations], by reason that it behoved Him to resemble His brethren in all things. And some of His brethren are very weak. Sissot, when our daughters were babes, I was wont to think thou lovedst better Alice than Vivien, and I am nearhand secure that it was by reason she was the weaker of the twain, and pave thee the more thought." "Surely," said I; "that alway holdeth good with a mother, that the barne which most needeth care is the dearest." Jack's answer, I knew, came from Holy Writ. "`As by him whom his mother blandisheth, thus will I comfort you.'"