the earl. 'We are decent people enough in Raglan, but she is much
too sober for us. Cheer up, Dorothy! Good times are at hand: that
thou mayest not doubt it, listen--but this is only for thy ear, not
for thy tongue: the king hath made thy cousin, that is me, Edward
Somerset, the husband of this fair lady, generalissimo of his three
armies, and admiral of a fleet, and truly I know not what all, for I
have yet but run my eye over the patent. And, wife, I verily do
believe the king but bides his time to make my father duke of
Somerset, and then one day thou wilt be a duchess, Margaret. Think
on that!'

Lady Glamorgan burst into tears.

'I would I might have a kiss of my Molly!' she cried.

She had never before in Dorothy's hearing uttered the name of her
child since her death. New dignity, strange as it may seem to some,
awoke suddenly the thought of the darling to whom titles were but
words, and the ice was broken. A pause followed.

'Yes, Margaret, thou art right,' said Glamorgan at length; 'it is
all but folly; yet as the marks of a king's favour, such honours are
precious.'

As to what a king's favour itself might be worth, that my lord of
Glamorgan lived to learn.

'It is I who pay for them,' said his wife.

'How so, my dove?'