When the ceremony was just completed, without any previous intimation, the Duke of York, who was present, drew his sword, and lightly struck the shoulder of the bridegroom, before he could rise from his knees. "Rise, Sir Bertram Lyngern!" So Maude became entitled at once to the honourable prefix of "Dame." The grander wedding was on the following Thursday. The Earl of Kent's costume baffles description. Suffice it to say that it cost two thousand pounds. The royal bride doffed her widow's weeds, and appeared in a crimson silk deeply edged with ermine, low in the neck, but with long sleeves to the wrist. She wore the dovecote, and over it an open circlet of gold and gems, to mark her royal rank. At the threshold of Constance's bower, after the ceremony, the old Lady Le Despenser met the Earl and Countess of Kent. "The Lord bless you, fair daughter!" she said, laying her hands on the bowed head of the bride. But a little later the same evening, she said unexpectedly, "Ay me! I am but a blind thing, Dame Maude; yet this match of the Lady Custance doth sorely misgive me." At the other end of the room, the Duke of York was saying, "You will visit me at Langley, fair sister, this coming spring?" "With a very good will, Ned." It only remains to be noted that Father Ademar officiated at both marriages; and that as in those days people went home for the honeymoon, not away from it, the Earl and Countess set out from Cardiff in a few days for Brockenhurst, the birthplace and favourite residence of the young Earl. The children were left with their grandmother; they were to follow, in charge of Maude and Bertram, to Langley, where their mother intended to rejoin them. Maude continued to be bowerwoman to her mistress; but some of the more menial functions usually discharged by one who filled that office, were now given to a younger girl, who bore the name of Eva de Scanteby. It was in the evening of a lovely spring day that Constance, accompanied by Kent, rejoined Maude and her children at Langley. CHAPTER NINE. PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT. "He that hath a thousand friends hath not a friend to spare, And he that hath one enemy shall find him everywhere." On the evening of Constance's arrival at Langley, two men sat in close conference in the Jerusalem Chamber of the Palace of Westminster. One of them was a priest, the other a layman. The first priest, and the first layman, in the realm; for the elder was Thomas de Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the younger was Henry of Bolingbroke, King of England.