It was not in words that the answer came at first. Only in an exceeding bitter cry-- "As of a wild thing taken in a trap, Which sees the trapper coming through the wood." Custance saw now the full depth of misery to which she was doomed. The utmost concession hitherto wrung from her was that she would go to London and confront the King. And now it was calmly required of her that she should not only sign away her own fair name, but should confront Kent himself--should sit a quiet spectator of a ceremony which would publicly declare the invalidity of her right to bear his name-- should by her own act consign her child to degradation and penury-- should be a witness and a consenting party to the utter destruction of all her hopes of happiness. She knew that the lark might as well plead with the iron bars as she with Henry of Bolingbroke. And the penalty of her refusal was not merely poverty and homelessness. She could have borne that; indeed, the sentence about the estates passed by her, hardly noted. The bitterest sting lay in the assurance thus placidly given her, that her loving little Richard would be consigned to the keeping of a woman whom she knew to hate her fiercely--that he would be taught to hate and despise her himself. He would be brought up as a stranger to her; he would be led to associate her name with scorn and disgrace. And how was Joan likely to treat the children, when she had perpetually striven to vex and humiliate the mother? The words came at last. But they were of very different character from those which had preceded them. "Grant me one further mercy, Sire," she said in a low voice, looking up to him:--"the one greater grace of death." "Fair Cousin, we would fain grant you abundant grace, so you put it not from you with your own perversity. We have proffered unto you full restorance to our favour, and to endow you with every of your late Lord's lands, on condition only of your obedience in one small matter. We take of you neither life nor liberty." "Life? no!--only all that maketh life worthy the having." "We wist not, fair Cousin, that our cousin of Kent were so precious," replied the King, with the faintest accent of satire in his calm, polished voice. But Custance, like a spring let loose, had returned to her previous mood.