Roger knew as well as Alianora that the pronoun included himself. He sent Anne into raptures, and Guenllian into much surprise, by an order that they should be ready to accompany him. His male friends were inclined to be exceedingly merry over this odd notion of the Earl. That he should have taken even his heir, at that early age, would have seemed to them amusing; but to choose a girl of nine for his companion struck them as a preposterous absurdity. Earl Roger paid no attention to them. Extremely sensitive to the lightest censure from lips that he loved, he was now perfectly callous alike to ridicule and to anger from others. Of the four children, Anne was his special darling. She and her brother Roger took after himself in character, while Edmund and Alianora were their mother’s children. Least attractive of them was Edmund, in whose disposition indolence and selfishness were already manifesting themselves strongly. When the children were summoned in the morning, Anne and Roger were always up in a moment, while Edmund had to be dug out of bed amid a storm of grumbles. All that Anne owed to her mother was that graceful and gracious manner, which with the mother was merely artificial polish, but in the daughter was ingrained as a part of her character. The child’s affection for her father was intense: she always shrank from her mother. The instinct of her true heart discerned the utter hollowness of Alianora, and the two natures could never amalgamate. April had almost bloomed into May when the party reached Trim Castle, where Roger meant to remain for a few weeks. *CHAPTER X.* *MARCUS CURTIUS.* "Yet thy true heart and loving faith, And agony of martyr death, God saw,—and He remembereth." —F. J. PALGRAVE. "What think you on thus sadly, my son?" said Mr. Robesart to Lawrence Madison, whom he found standing with folded arms, gazing out of an embrasure as though he were not contemplating the landscape. "I was thinking, Father," was the answer, in a low, dreamy tone, "wherein success lieth." "What fashion of success?" Lawrence smiled, "I am beginning to learn that there be more fashions thereof than one." "It is good to learn it early," said the priest. "For man is apt to think that alone success which hath a gloss and a glitter about it. We be too oft like childre, which would rather a brass counter that did shine bravely, than a gold noble that was dull and covered with dirt. But what be thy thoughts thereon, my son?" "I thought, Father, that many men did destroy their own success by being too eager to grasp thereat, afore God had it ready."