or kin. For throughout Hertfordshire and Essex and Kent there dwelt no
Norman baron nor any earl who was beloved of his Saxon people as was
the Lord of Stoke; wherefore his lady felt herself safe in his absence,
though she knew well enough that only a small part of that devotion was
for herself.

There are people who seem able to go through life, with profit to
themselves, if not to others, by a sort of vicarious grace arising out
of the devotion wasted on them by their nearest and dearest, and
dependent upon the success, the honour, and the reputation of those who
cherish them. The Lady Goda set down to her own full credit the
faithful attachment which her husband's Saxon swains not only felt for
him, but owed him in return for his unchanging kindness and impartial
justice; and she took the desert to herself, as such people will, with
a whole-souled determination to believe that it was all her due though
she knew that she deserved none of it.

She had married Raymond Warde without loving him, being ambitious of
his name and honours, when his future had seemed brilliant in the days
of good King Henry. She had borne him an only son, who worshipped her
with a chivalric devotion that was almost childlike in its blindness;
but the most that she could feel, in return, was a sort of motherly
vanity in his outward being; and this he accepted as love, though it
was as far from that as devotion to self is from devotion to another--
as greed is far from generosity. She had not been more than sixteen
years of age when she had married, being the youngest of many sisters,
left almost dowerless when their father had departed on a pilgrimage to
the Holy Land, from which he had never returned. Raymond Warde had
loved her for her beauty, which was real, and for her character, which
was entirely the creation of his own imagination; and with the calm,