unconscious fatuity which so often underlies the characters of honest
and simple men, he had continued throughout his married life to believe
that his wife's affection, if neither very deep nor very high, was
centred upon himself and upon Gilbert. Any man a whit less true and
straightforward would have found out the utter emptiness of such belief
within a year. Goda had been bitterly disappointed by the result of her
marriage, so far as her real tastes and ambitions were concerned. She
had dreamt of a court; she was condemned to the country. She loved
gayety; she was relegated to dulness. Moreover the Lord of Stoke was
strong rather than attractive, imposing rather than seductive, and he
had never dreamed of that small coin of flattery which greedy and
dissatisfied natures require at all costs when their real longings are
unfed. It is their nature to give little; it is their nature and their
delight to ask much, and to take all that is within their reach. So it
came to pass that Goda took her husband's loving generosity and her
son's devotion as matters foregone and of course, which were her due,
and which might stay hunger, though they could not satisfy her vanity's
large appetite; and she took, besides, such other things, both good and
bad, as she found in her path, especially and notably the heart of
Arnold de Curboil, a widowed knight, cousin to that Archbishop of
Canterbury who had crowned Stephen king, after swearing allegiance to
Maud. This Arnold, who had followed his great cousin in supporting King
Stephen's cause, had received for his service broad lands, both farm
and forest, in Hertfordshire, bordering upon the hereditary estates of
the Wardes; and in the turmoil and chaos of the long civil war, his
word, at first without Raymond's knowledge, had more than once saved
the latter's little castle from siege and probable destruction. Warde,
in his loyalty to the rightful sovereign, had, indeed, rather drawn
back from the newcomer's friendship than made advances to win it; but
Raymond had yielded in the end to his wife's sarcasms and to his own