body trailing away astern of them, with a sort of dome over the chancel. Within, both building and ornaments were-well, just tawdry. Over the whole place brooded an air of decay, as if, after dominating these lands for centuries, the "Church" realized that at last it was losing its grip on them, and languidly acquiesced in the fact. Well, I am no friend to Rome, and the record of her misdeeds out here makes me, when reading it, grow faint and sick with horror, but still, she stands for some recognition of God in these parts; and if she goes there is nothing to take her place. As in France, the people will judge all ministers of religion by what they know of Rome, and will refuse to acknowledge any. In the American strip, however, it may be different. I do not attempt any description of the interior of the cathedral; there is really nothing to describe, or rather worth description. Only I was struck by the fact that during the whole time we were in and around it we did not see one priest or custodian of any kind. There were a few devout souls who had stepped aside from their burdens for a few minutes into its cool darkness to pray, and a nun with a patient other-world face knelt at the door and asked alms for the poor, but of the usual signs of activity in such churches there were none. But every door was wide open.

Emerging from the cathedral into the glaring sunlight we strolled, rather aimlessly I must admit, about the city. But it would not develop itself for us, would not become anything else but a fortuitous collection of mean houses fringing those horrible roads. And presently we became aware for the first time that here, in Central America, that chivalrous creature, the Spaniard, has had all his politeness bred out of him. The ladies of the party, although escorted, were simply stared out of countenance by groups of

well-dressed men, who even followed to have another stare when we hesitated for a minute at the corner of a street before deciding which way to go. At last, under this never-ending scrutiny, we all got so hot and angry that we fled down to the bay and took a boat. During the operation quite a little crowd gathered, taking apparently an intense interest in every detail of our faces. I say ours, but I must limit the pronoun to the ladies, who unfortunately had no veils. The only place I ever remember seeing anything like it before was at Canton, but that calm Celestial scrutiny was not nearly so galling as this. It did not seem personal somehow, the Chinese stare being more like that of an automatic face than anything else.

Once out on the smooth waters of the bay, things began to adjust themselves. Our view of the city was in proper focus, we were not hampered by so many details, and the crumbling treeclad fortifications, with the eternal sea beating up against them as it had always done, somehow managed to get history into perspective. It did not need a great exercise of imagination to see back into the past when these quiet waters were dotted with Spanish treasure-ships, to note them receiving their lading of silver, spice, pearls, and other valuable merchandise, borne here on the backs of Indians from the interior, whose path was punctuated with skeletons in every attitude that a miserable death could suggest. Outside, one rejoiced to think, lay hidden retribution in the shape of a group of little English ships, their crews hungering fiercely for the encounter with the Dons, in the almost certain prospect of snatching from them their ill-gotten treasure, and incidentally, perhaps, sending them with their ships to a swifter and more merciful death than they had given the poor Indians. It all seemed so real and close out here. And, as the

CHAPTER VI.

Swanlea was one of the strangest and most beautiful houses in England at that day. It stood low down, flat on a meadow, and the hills rose about it, covered with forests of beech and fir. Round about it, back and front, a little river twirled and ran; a stream, though not the same, namesake and likeness of "my Lady Lea." To the south of the house, about which elms and cedars were grouped in stately fashion, this small river spread itself into a natural lake with an island in it, on which ivy and wild trees were now fast hiding the sturdy remains of a fortress much older than the present dwelling of the barons of Marlowe. This had once been a strong little place, defended by water and bridge and wall, though commanded by the hills all round.

It was the father of Harry, a man of large fortune and fine taste, a friend and companion of the Duke of Bedford, and thus touched by French taste and Renaissance fancy, who had dismantled the little castle on the island and had built the large, luxurious house which now nestled so confidingly in the valley of the Lea. It would seem that he had not expected any war, foreign or civil, to disturb his repose there, for never was there a house more difficult to defend. But this former Harry, Sir William Roden's old friend and brotherin-arms,-though the men were most unlike did not live to see England torn in the strife of the Red and White Roses. He died in peace at Swanlea, not very long after his second marriage with the Lady Isabel, whose tastes were even more modern than his own and her freedom of thought very much wider.

He left two sons only-Harry, a youth of seventeen, and Richard, a child in leading-strings. These two were as different as their mothers before them. The first Baroness was a woman of the old world, of the Middle Ages now passing away. She gave largely to the poor; she scourged herself and wore hair-cloth next her skin. She was a saint, but also a devoted wife and mother, though her life may have been shortened by anxiety for her husband's and her son's salvation. She was carried up the steep path to the vault in the old church on the hill, the path worn by her feet in pilgrimage, to grow mossy and deserted when she was gone. On her altar-tomb, the marble face looked up to heaven as if to say, "How long, O Lord?" while all the influences she hated reigned in her stead at Swanlea.

The house was very fantastic, crowded with towers and turrets: it was easy to see that its inspiration came from the Palais des Tournelles at Paris, where the Duke of Bedford had his quarters when he ruled there. Inside it was beautifully panelled in wood, or hung with rare tapestries and curtains; there was a fine library, for both Lord Marlowe and his son and successor loved learning, like the best men of their day. Outside, the formal gardens were divided by high hedges of box and yew, cut here and there into quaint shapes of birds and animals; live peacocks too, in summer, strutted on the lawns, and swans floated on the lake.

A crowd of well-trained servants made life run easily at Swanlea, and the house was furnished with every luxury of the time. Isabel Lady Marlowe held a kind of little court there, and with a keen eye for the winning

side she secretly kept the friendship of the Duke of York and his attractive son, while her step-son, with men and money, devoted himself to the cause of Lancaster. Still, owing to her cleverness and his generosity, they did not quarrel. With Harry his father's wife, though out of sympathy with him, held the place of his mother, and though lord and master at Swanlea, he used his authority so little, lived so simply, and was so constantly away in attendance on his Queen, that it seemed as if the beautiful place were Lady Marlowe's to use as she pleased. For this liberality she repaid him by whispering that his eccentricity, which was undoubted, at times amounted to madness, and so the slander, encouraged by his own wild and careless ways, took form in the names by which half London and all the Duke of York's party knew him,-Mad Marlowe, the Queen's man.

The Lady Isabel, as they called her, was sitting in a small, high, beautiful room, lined with carved shelves of richly bound manuscripts. She sat at a desk, with letters spread out before her. The winter sunlight glimmered in through tall painted windows, and the burning logs on the hearth gave out a pleasant smell. Two greyhounds, with silver collars, lay on velvet cushions before the fire, and between them, on a larger cushion, lounged my Lady's son Richard, a young fellow of twenty, with a mass of curled yellow hair and a face touched up with paint. He yawned often, and touched a few notes on his lute; now and then he lifted large lazy eyes and looked at his mother.

With her there was no idleness, no personal luxury. Her black velvet gown fell in stately folds; her pale face, still beautiful, for she was further from fifty than Sir William Roden thought, was grave and marked by care. It was a curious face, with much brightness

but no sweetness; sometimes stony in hardness and coldness, sometimes moved to smiles and laughter which were not always found reassuring by persons in her power. Sir William, in his blind confidence, knew almost nothing of the woman to whom he had been ready to entrust his dear grandchild's future. He took the Lady Isabel on faith, as being all that his friend Marlowe's wife ought to be. He had only seen her once in his life, and that was before her husband's death, many years ago. In those days, indeed, Isabel Marlowe seemed to be a model of all womanly virtues, and a man would have taken his oath at any time, that she was what she chose to appear.

She read those letters again and again. She had read them, at intervals, for the last twenty-four hours, ever since they reached her from the fatal field where Queen Margaret had been victorious and had triumphed cruelly over Richard of York in his death. Outwardly, the traditions of the house of Marlowe obliged the Baroness to regard the news of Wakefield as good news; inwardly, it was an unwelcome check to her ambitions for herself and Richard her son. A personal friendship and mutual understanding with Edward Earl of March was not entirely the result of that fascination which women seldom resisted, and which it had amused him to exert on her, the mother of the strongest of Lancastrians. Isabel would have laughed at the notion that she could be attracted by any man to her political undoing. Convinced that the future lay with the White Rose, she had a perfect scorn for Henry the Sixth, and a perfect hatred for Margaret of Anjou.

Some little curiosity found its way into the soft indifferent eyes of Richard, who seldom tried to understand his mother, and was still more seldom

allowed to do so. She kept him in lazy luxury, childish and ignorant. Feigning to approve of the boy's half-conscious love and admiration for his stepbrother, she never encouraged him to seek Harry's society. When Lord Marlowe was at Swanlea, some excuse was generally found to keep Dick out of his way. Hunting and hawking and all the other manly sports were frowned upon; when the lad, supposed to be delicate and frail, escaped to join in them, less from any love of them than from the wish to gain Harry's good opinion, it was generally at the cost of his mother's displeasure. Men laughed at the weak, gayly-dressed fellow, and called him Popinjay. Even Harry's kindliness was not always proof against a certain scorn for him, though he guessed at better qualities beneath. He had been ready to enter into the plan suggested by my Lady after she received Sir William Roden's first letter, of marrying Dick to the heiress of Ruddiford. Welcoming anything that might make a man of poor Dick, this country girl, thrown by her old grandfather into his mother's arms, seemed the very wife for him. A good Lancastrian connection, too, it would serve to steady my Lady on the right side, Harry thought, having little idea how far his step-mother's Yorkist leanings carried her. That she admired and believed in the Duke of York, he knew; but so did others who yet kept a dutiful loyalty to King Henry.

Lord Marlowe, as we know, had reckoned without the personality of Mistress Margaret Roden. But no news of him or his mission had reached Swanlea since he and his men rode away up the valley northward, a few days before Christmas; and it was now January.

"My Lady Mother," said young Richard, softly, "you pull a long face over this Wakefield battle and the death of the Duke, but is the news

"It may, Richard," said his mother. "But think you what that means,the reign of a man of diseased brain, and the rule of a woman bloody, fierce, and cruel, who will treat all suspected of favoring York as she has treated the Duke himself and my Lord Salisbury and many more. My head and thine, Dick, may fall one day"-she smiled at him, and drew a pointed finger across her throat. "I have enemies enough,there are slanders enough abroad,what do you say?"

"I say, we Marlowes wear the Red Rose, and Harry gave me the Prince's silver badge for my cap, Mother. I care little for parties; still, why should I lose my head for the color of a flower?"

"You care nothing and know nothing, silly Popinjay," said Isabel. ""Tis waste of time to talk to thee"; and again she bent over the papers on her desk.

A cloud of sulky anger darkened the boy's handsome face. He leaped up from his cushion, dashed his lute on the floor so violently as to break it, and stalked across the room to her, while the dogs lifted their heads, and one growled low. Richard turned and looked at him.

"I will have that dog killed; he hates me," he said. "All the rest love me, but that pampered beast of yours-"

"Ah, I have more than one pampered beast in my kennels," said Lady Marlowe. "When they begin to kill each other, the chaos will be too great. Why this flame of fury, Dick? What have you to say to me?"

"Why do you treat me so, Mother? I know more than you think. I am not a child, not even a boy, remember. I am a man. I shall be married soon, and lord of a castle."

"You know so much as that?" she