Still the final struggle was terrible. Twice she resumed the pen; twice she flung it down in passionate though transient determination not by her own act to alienate her child's inheritance and blot her own fair name. But every time the memory of her favourite, her loving little Richard, rose up before her, and she could not utter the refusal which would deprive her of him for ever. Perhaps she might even yet have held out, had the alternative been that of resigning him to any person but Joan. But the certain knowledge that he would be taught to despise and hate her was beyond the mother's power to endure. At last she snatched up the pen, and dashed her name on the paper. It was signed in regal form, without a surname. "There!" she cried passionately: "behold all ye get of me! If I may not sign `Custance Kent,' content you with `Custance.' Never `Custance Le Despenser!' My Lord was true to his heart's core; and never sign I _his_ name to a dishonour and a lie!--O my Dickon, my pretty, pretty Dickon! thou little knowest the price thine hapless mother hath paid for thee this day!" Henry the Fourth was not a man who loved cruelty for its own sake: he was simply a calculating, politic one. He never wasted power on unnecessary torture. When his purpose was served, he let his victim go. "Fully enough, fair Cousin!" he said with apparent kindness. "You sign as a Prince's daughter--and such are you. We thank you right heartily for this your wise submission, and as you shall shortly see, you shall not lose thereby." Not another word was said about her presence at the wedding. That would, come later. His present object was to get her to London. The evening of the 17th of November saw them at Westminster Palace. During the journey, Avice carefully avoided any private intercourse with Maude. The latter tried once or twice to renew the interrupted conversation; but it was either dinner-time, or it was prayer-time, or there was some excellent reason why Avice could not listen. And at last Maude resigned the hope. They never met again. But one winter day, eighteen years later, Maude Lyngern heard that Sister Avice, of the Minoresses' house at Aldgate, had died in the odour of sanctity; and that the sisters were not without hope that the holy Father might pronounce her a saint, or at least "beata." It was added that she had worn herself to a skeleton by fasting, and for three weeks before her death had refused all sustenance but the sacrament, which she received daily. And that was the last of Cousin Hawise. We return from this digression to Westminster Palace. News met them as they stepped over the threshold--news of death. Alianora, Countess of March, sister of Kent, and mother of the Mortimers, had died at Powys Castle. When Custance reached the chamber allotted to her at Westminster, she found there all the personal property which she had left at Langley twelve months earlier.