Full download test bank at ebook textbookfull.

com

Spenser’s Heavenly Elizabeth:

Providential History in The Faerie

CLICK LINK TO DOWLOAD

https://textbookfull.com/product/spensers-
heavenly-elizabeth-providential-history-in-
the-faerie-queene-donald-stump/

textbookfull
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Emotional Settings in Early Modern Pedagogical Culture:

Hamlet, The Faerie Queene, and Arcadia Judith Owens

https://textbookfull.com/product/emotional-settings-in-early-
modern-pedagogical-culture-hamlet-the-faerie-queene-and-arcadia-
judith-owens/

History and Salvation in Medieval Ireland Elizabeth

Boyle

https://textbookfull.com/product/history-and-salvation-in-
medieval-ireland-elizabeth-boyle/

Norco 80 the true story of the most spectacular bank

robbery in American history First Hardcover Edition
Houlahan

https://textbookfull.com/product/norco-80-the-true-story-of-the-
most-spectacular-bank-robbery-in-american-history-first-
hardcover-edition-houlahan/

Major Problems in American History Volume II Since 1865

Elizabeth Cobbs

https://textbookfull.com/product/major-problems-in-american-
history-volume-ii-since-1865-elizabeth-cobbs/
Major Problems in American History - Volume I: To 1877
Elizabeth Cobbs

https://textbookfull.com/product/major-problems-in-american-
history-volume-i-to-1877-elizabeth-cobbs/

Edmund Spenser and Animal Life Palgrave Studies in

Animals and Literature 1st Edition Rachel Stenner

https://textbookfull.com/product/edmund-spenser-and-animal-life-
palgrave-studies-in-animals-and-literature-1st-edition-rachel-
stenner/

Heavenly Sustenance in Patristic Texts and Byzantine

Iconography: Nourished by the Word Elena Ene
D-Vasilescu

https://textbookfull.com/product/heavenly-sustenance-in-
patristic-texts-and-byzantine-iconography-nourished-by-the-word-
elena-ene-d-vasilescu/

Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War

Elizabeth R. Varon

https://textbookfull.com/product/armies-of-deliverance-a-new-
history-of-the-civil-war-elizabeth-r-varon/

The Erotics of History An Atlantic African Example

First Edition Donald L. Donham

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-erotics-of-history-an-
atlantic-african-example-first-edition-donald-l-donham/
 Spenser’s Heavenly
Elizabeth
Providential History in
The Faerie Queene

Donald Stump
 Queenship and Power

Series Editors
Charles Beem
University of North Carolina
Pembroke, NC, USA

Carole Levin
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE, USA
This series focuses on works specializing in gender analysis, women’s
studies, literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitutional,
and diplomatic history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the
strategies that queens—both consorts and regnants, as well as female
regents—pursued in order to wield political power within the structures
of male-dominant societies. The works describe queenship in Europe as
well as many other parts of the world, including East Asia, Sub-Saharan
Africa, and Islamic civilization.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14523
 Donald Stump

Spenser’s Heavenly
Elizabeth
Providential History in The Faerie Queene
Donald Stump
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO, USA

Queenship and Power

ISBN 978-3-030-27114-5 ISBN 978-3-030-27115-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27115-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 For my father,
whose love of history and literature proved contagious
For Eleonore, Nathan and Monica, Monica and Adam
who had to wait a long time to see what was being written
in the study at the top of the stairs
and for Carol, Bill, and Carole
who have been dear and faithful friends in the search
for the Faerie Queene
 Preface

When, in my senior year of college, I decided to leave the study of ­cellular

biology, it was an unexpectedly powerful encounter with the English
Renaissance that drew me away. Two of my finest teachers, John Crossett
and Sheldon Zitner, introduced me to Shakespeare, Milton, and especially
Spenser–with just enough knowledge of the classics and the Bible to allow
me to glimpse the greatness of the texts I was reading. Having learned from
my father to love history and literature, I was fascinated by the strange
beauty and violence of the Arthurian dreamscape that is The Faerie Queene.
In graduate school and in my early teaching career, I benefit-
ted from several scholars who, despite the reigning orthodoxy of the
New Criticism, shared my interest in historicist approaches to Spenser.
I learned, for example, a great deal from the work of Frank Kermode,
Michael O’Connell, Thomas Cain, and Robin Headlam Wells. The more
I read, however, the more I wondered whether I did not need to know a
great deal more about Queen Elizabeth than I did, and I have been stud-
ying her and her court with increasing fascination ever since. Over the
last few years, I have stepped back from work on Sidney and Renaissance
drama to see just how much my reading about the queen might change
my reading of The Faerie Queene. The change was more than I expected,
and Spenser’s Heavenly Elizabeth was the result.
The greatest surprise was the recognition that the various figures of
Elizabeth woven through the poem tended to age along with the queen,
providing allegorical parallels to the dangers and crises that marked the
course of her life. Setting Spenser’s “mirrours more than one” of the

vii
viii PREFACE

queen over against one another, in sequence, brought out insights and
nuances that were new to me.
The other surprise was that the figures of Elizabeth were more integral
than I had thought to the poet’s overarching aim to “fashion a gentle-
man or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.” The widely held
view that Spenser began with concepts—theological, ethical, political,
and psychological—and then drew on current affairs to provide passing
illustrations of their complexities began to seem inadequate. The more
closely I considered the literary portraits of Elizabeth, the more it seemed
that her life, “clowdily enrapped” in a “darke conceit,” provided the
primary structure around which the various conceptual allegories were
arranged. Drawing on the interest and the celebrity appeal of Elizabeth
and her court, Spenser had found a way to teach abstract points using
concrete contemporary events, not simply as illustrations, but as the very
tools of instruction. At least in its portraits of the queen, the poem is
just what Spenser said it was in his letter of introduction to his friend
Sir Walter Ralegh, a “continued Allegory” written to celebrate Queen
Elizabeth in all her fascination and lived complexity.
In exploring that complexity, I have drawn on four centuries of com-
mentary on The Faerie Queene, including marginalia written by the
poet’s contemporaries, the reflections of editors and antiquarians from
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, more rigorous schol-
arship of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a great
deal of recent scholarship and criticism. Beyond such reading, however,
I have benefitted from years of good talk and happy collaboration with
friends and colleagues who share my interest in Spenser and the queen.
Much of my early thinking about them was talked through with the
late Carol Kaske, whom I met for weekly “Spenser lunches” over the
course of many delightful summers in Ithaca, New York. Carol was a mag-
net who drew students and scholars from Cornell University and Ithaca
College to delightful spots overlooking Lake Cayuga for sandwiches and
lively conversation about everything medieval and Elizabethan.
Much that I know more specifically about the queen and the history
of her reign I learned through many years of friendship with Carole
Levin, with whom I founded the Queen Elizabeth I Society. Since she
knows most everything there is to know about Elizabeth, and also knows
most everyone who takes a serious interested in her, Carole has been a
wonderful guide to the world of Elizabethan historical scholarship that
plays such a prominent role in this book.
 PREFACE ix

My thinking about The Faerie Queene owes more than I can say to
years of lovely, long talks over conference meals with William Oram. In
an act of true friendship, Bill brought his remarkable skills as an editor
and his encyclopedic knowledge of The Faerie Queene to bear on the final
manuscript of this book, providing voluminous comments and sugges-
tions without which it would have been much the poorer. I also owe
more than I can say to Susan Felch, with whom I collaborated on the
Norton Critical Edition Elizabeth I and Her Age, and to Linda Shenk,
with whom Carole Levin and I co-edited the collection Elizabeth I and
the ‘Sovereign Arts.’ Both have taught me much and been good compan-
ions on the way.
Over the years, other colleagues and friends have read and com-
mented on parts of the project at various stages in its development. My
special thanks to Thomas Roche for his advice and suggestions on some
of my early work. More recently, Carole Levin, Roger Kuin, Jennifer
Rust, and Joshua Held have read chapters to be sure that I was get-
ting my history and my theology straight. Special thanks, too, to schol-
ars who attend the annual Renaissance sessions at the International
Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo for their ideas at a special
session in 2017 to come up with ideas to explain why Spenser came to
such a different opinion of the queen from that held by his literary twin,
Sir Philip Sidney. That discussion started me on the road to my conclud-
ing chapter.
Finally, let me offer a special note of appreciation to the late
A.C. Hamilton. Like all students and readers of Spenser, I owe Bert a
great debt for the remarkable commentary in his two magisterial editions
of The Faerie Queene and for his tireless and brilliant work as principal
editor of The Spenser Encyclopedia. I also have a more personal reason,
though, for being grateful. Bert never approved of the sort of topical
reading of The Faerie Queene that is the stuff of this book. So thought-
ful on the subject was he, however, both in personal conversation and
in print, that to meet his objections was obviously the best way to avoid
the mistakes that have so often marred historicist interpretation. I hope I
have, and if not, it isn’t Bert’s fault. He did his best.

St. Louis, USA Donald Stump

 Contents

Part I Spenser’s Method and Artistry

1 Introduction to Spenser’s Art of Royal Encomium 3

1 Heavenly Queen: The Problem of Over-Idealization 6
2 The Humanists: Moral Instruction and the Uses of History 10
3 The Poet: Fictional History as Ethical Allegory 12
4 The Queen: Elizabeth as Gloriana 13
5 The Critics: The Faerie Queene as “Continued Allegory” 15
6 Terms: Those Used in This Study in Special Senses 26
7 The Reign: Elizabeth’s Life and Providential History 28
Bibliography 32

2 Spenser, Elizabeth, and the Problem of Flattery 35

1 Karl Marx: The Ethics of Spenser’s Praise for the Queen 37
2 Protestant Humanists: Roots of the Elizabethan Revulsion
Against Flattery 38
3 The Shorter Poems: Spenser’s Testimony in His Own Defense 47
4 The Amoretti: A Case Study in True and False Praise 51
5 The Faerie Queene: The Paradox of Deprecatory Idealization 60
Bibliography 65

xi
xii CONTENTS

3 Gloriana, Biblical Typology, and Moral Transfiguration 69

1 Gloriana and Elizabeth: Arthurian “History”
and Reformation England 73
2 Virgil and the Bible: Models of Spenserian Typology 77
3 Moses and Elizabeth: Detailed and Extended Types 81
4 Elijah and Elizabeth: Fragmentary and Discontinuous Types 86
5 Virgil and Spenser: Providential Acts of Imperfect Agents 89
6 Elizabeth and Christ: Two Solutions to the Problem
of Flattery 93
Bibliography 99

Part II Spenser’s Elizabeth

4 Una and the English Reformation 105

1 Errour: Henry, Anne, and the Early Reformation 109
2 Sansloy: Edward, Mary, and Religious Violence 123
3 Satyrs: Elizabeth, the Commons, and Marian Persecution 126
4 Duessa: Catholic Retrenchment and Protestant Revolt 130
5 Despair: Religious Turncoats and the Problem
of Unforgivable Sin 135
6 The Dragon: Catholic Lords and the Elizabethan Settlement 140
7 The Cross of St. George: Spenser and the Power
of Holy Things 154
Bibliography 157

5 The Maturation of the Queen 161

1 Duessa and Archimago: Elizabeth and the Unfinished
Reformation 162
2 Britomart, Malecasta, and Merlin: Elizabeth’s Calling 170
3 Belphoebe and Braggadocchio: Flirting with a French
Marriage 177
4 Florimell, Braggadocchio, and Britomart: Critiquing
Elizabeth’s Court of Love 181
5 Belphoebe and Timias: Inflamed Desire and the Virgin
Queen 193
6 Florimell and Marinell: English Economies of Land and Sea 203
Bibliography 212
 CONTENTS xiii

6 The Queen in Her Glory 217

1 Britomart and Paridell: Sexual Ethics and National
Destiny 220
2 Duessa and Mercilla: Elizabeth, Mary, and English
Hegemony 231
3 Adicia and Mercilla: Elizabeth, the Armada,
and Monarchial Republicanism 242
4 Cynthia and Dame Nature: Elizabeth, Mutabilitie,
and the End of the Reign 257
Bibliography 266

Part III The Faerie Queene in Context

7 Una, Mercilla, and the Elizabethan Apocalypse 273

1 Una and Redcrosse: Two Dragons, the Rider,
and the Woman Clothed with the Sun 277
2 Mercilla and Belge: The Netherlands and the Second
Apocalypse 288
3 Faerie Apocalypse: Spenser’s Theology of the End Times 295
Bibliography 304

8 Sidney, Spenser, and the Queen 307

1 Sources of Discontent: Sidney’s Quarrel with Elizabeth 308
2 Divergences: Sidney’s Elizabeth, Spenser’s Queen 312
3 Matters of Faith: History and Divine Providence 318
Bibliography 327

Index 329
 List of Figures

Chapter 4
Fig. 1 Portrait of Princess Elizabeth. Elizabeth as a young Reformer
(Courtesy of GL Archive/Alamy Stock Photo) 125

Chapter 5
Fig. 1 The Rainbow Portrait. The queen as a Petrarchan mistress
(Courtesy of World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo) 185

Chapter 6
Fig. 1 The Armada Portrait. Elizabeth at the height of her glory
(Courtesy of Digital Image Library/Alamy Stock Photo) 245
Fig. 2 Elizabeth with Time and Death. The queen in old age 259

xv
 PART I

Spenser’s Method and Artistry

 CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Spenser’s Art

of Royal Encomium

This study explores the relation between Edmund Spenser and the ruler
he served as a provincial official and a poet for most of his adult life.
Though, by his own account, he met her only once, he reflected deeply
on her as a woman and a queen, depicting her from many angles in a
number of imaginary characters in his great and influential romance epic,
The Faerie Queene. The most celebratory of these depictions is Gloriana,
a fairy monarch who never actually appears in the poem but who is
praised at the opening of most of its books and mentioned occasionally
along the way. She it is who inspires the knights celebrated in the poem
and sends them into the world to defend goodness and justice. Five lesser
figures also serve as what Spenser calls “mirrours” of the queen: Una,
Belphoebe, Britomart, Mercilla, and Cynthia. The sheer richness of detail
and complexity of perspective created by the interplay of so many por-
traits of Elizabeth is difficult to comprehend, much less to sort out. Few
modern readers—even those with a professional interest in the poet—
know the queen’s background, her life story, her theological, ethical, and
political views, and the history of her age and reign in sufficient detail
to grasp the implications of Spenser’s wonderfully allusive (and illusive)
allegorical depictions.
My own study of Elizabeth’s life has left me with two impressions: that
Spenser’s representations are remarkably well informed and astute, and
that they are odd. Since their astuteness is the subject of the remainder
of the book, let me focus here on their oddity, which is readily suggested
by comparison with a contemporary writer who was in many ways the

© The Author(s) 2019 3

D. Stump, Spenser’s Heavenly Elizabeth, Queenship and Power,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27115-2_1
4 D. STUMP

poet’s model.1 Throughout his literarily brilliant but politically marginal

career, Spenser looked to Sir Philip Sidney for inspiration. Like Sidney,
he focused his literary interests in the genres of the complaint, the love
sonnet, pastoral poetry, and the romance epic. Like Sidney, too, he spent
much of his career seeking the patronage of Queen Elizabeth, hop-
ing to gain a position of influence in her government during the years
when England was taking its first steps toward its eventual prominence
in the affairs of Europe and the world. And like him, he was a militant
Protestant, anxious that Elizabeth should consolidate her power against
conservative elements opposed to her reformation of the English Church
and against the enemies besetting Protestants abroad. Given the close
affinities between the two poets, the oddity is that Spenser diverged so
widely from Sidney in his representations of the queen.
In his greatest work, the pastoral romance-epic Arcadia, Sidney
alludes to Elizabeth in several ways, none of them flattering.2 A fic-
tional stand-in for Sidney himself—named appropriately “Philisides” to
echo the sound of his name and also to call to mind the poet’s self-im-
age in his sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella3—joins in the pastoral
singing matches of the Arcadian shepherds. One of his songs recounts
a dream-vision warning of dangers to the state arising from the queen’s
negotiations to marry a foreigner. As Blair Worden and others have
argued, the song “As I My Little Flock on Ister Bank” offers a stinging
response to Elizabeth’s infatuation with a French Prince of the Blood,
François Hercules, Duke of Anjou. Although Queen Elizabeth is never
touched on directly, the implications of the eclog are clear. By desiring to
marry a French, Catholic prince and to conceive a royal heir of divided
nationality, she threatens to sacrifice the peace, freedom, and safety of
her people.
Nor is Philisides’s vision of the disaster looming in the French mar-
riage a side issue. As scholars have demonstrated, concern about the crisis

1 On the extent of Sidney’s influence on him, see Donald Stump, “Edmund Spenser,”

in The Dictionary Literary Biography, vol. 167: Sixteenth-Century British Nondramatic

Writers, edited by David A. Richardson (Detroit, MI: Bruccoli Clark Layman, Gale
Research, 1996), 228–63.
2 See Donald Stump, “Mapping the Revisions to Arcadia: Geo-political Decision-Making

in Sidney and Virgil,” Sidney Journal 30, no. 2 (2012): 1–31, especially 29–31.
3 In Latin, Philisides means “star lover,” as does Astrophil.
 1 INTRODUCTION TO SPENSER’S ART OF ROYAL ENCOMIUM 5

pervades Arcadia.4 In many ways, the political situation in Greece paral-

lels that in England in matters that were of deep concern to Sidney and
the forward Protestant faction at court dominated by his uncle, Robert
Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The peril, in their view, lay in the queen’s
reluctance to take decisive steps to defend England from insurrection
and invasion. The stages by which the orderly and peaceful state of
Arcadia devolves into civil disorder are very like those that Sidney had
warned Elizabeth about in a letter to her written in 1579 to dissuade her
from the Anjou match. In the New Arcadia, the danger posed by the
French marriage appears in the story of Queen Helen of Corinth, widely
recognized as a half-concealed figure for Elizabeth.5
At first glance, a gulf separates Sidney’s figures of the queen from
Spenser’s dazzling and adoring representations. None of Spenser’s “mir-
rours” of Elizabeth resembles even remotely Sidney’s Basilius, the besot-
ted ruler of Arcadia, or his infatuated Queen Helen. Instead, we have the
luminous figure of Gloriana, a divine figure shedding light on the world
and inspiring the poet as one of his muses.

                                                O Goddesse heauenly bright,

Mirrour of grace and Maiestie diuine,
Great Ladie of the greatest Isle, whose light
Like Phoebus lampe throughout the world doth shine,
Shed thy faire beames into my feeble eyne,
And raise my thoughtes too humble and too vile,
To thinke of that true glorious type of thine…. (I.proem.4)6

4 See, for example, Edwin Greenlaw, “The Captivity Episode in Sidney’s Arcadia,” in The

Manly Anniversary Studies in Language and Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1923), 54–63; Katherine Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), 177–79, 263–64; and Blair Worden, The Sound
of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press), especially 127–206.
5 Dennis Kay, “‘She Was a Queen, and Therefore Beautiful’: Sidney, His Mother, and

Queen Elizabeth,” Review of English Studies, n.s. 43 (February 1992): 18–39; Duncan-
Jones, Sir Philip Sidney, 211. Worden sees Helen as an idealized version of Elizabeth, but
he overlooks her abandonment of royal responsibility in not assisting Basilius and in succor-
ing the rebel Amphialus during the Arcadian civil war. See 133, 136, 243–44.
6 The Faerie Queene, edited by A.C. Hamilton, 2nd ed., text edited by Hiroshi Yamashita,

and Toshiyuki Suzuki (London: Longman, 2001). All subsequent references are to this
edition.
6 D. STUMP

Unlike Sidney’s dark, critical depictions of the queen, Spenser’s are

luminous.
That arresting contrast provides the starting point for this study. It
turns out to be more difficult to explain than one might suppose. The
1580s and 1590s, when Spenser was composing The Faerie Queene, were
hardly sunny. Internationally, England was subjected to a series of assas-
sination plots against Elizabeth supported by her enemies on the con-
tinent, two major rebellions in Ireland, the collapse of a key alliance
with France, and no less than three attempts to crush her regime with
the overwhelming force of the Spanish Armada. War with Spain would
drag on until Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Nor was the period a good one
for the queen domestically. In the 1590s, England suffered bad harvests,
food riots, a rebellion by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and the disas-
trous effects on the economy of costly, unremitting war with Spain.
One would think that, as advocates of the forceful expansion of a
Protestant sphere of influence to include all the British Isles and nearby
areas of Europe, Spenser and Sidney would have seen their queen with
similarly gloomy and anxious eyes. In this study, I undertake to explain
the grounds for Spenser’s far more celebratory vision of her and the
part she played in establishing England’s outsized role in world affairs
in the centuries that followed. Though critical of her leadership in many
respects, his characterizations of her are grounded in views of human
nature and divine providence that differ sharply from those of his more
famous and politically engaged mentor and model. I will return to the
contrast between Spenser and Sidney at the end of this study.

1   Heavenly Queen: The Problem of Over-Idealization

As is so often the case with Spenser, something as seemingly simple as
praise for the queen turns out to be surprisingly complex. The first dif-
ficulty is that, to modern ears, his celebrations of Elizabeth ring false
because they seem overly idealized. Even judged by his own standards,
as laid out in the explanatory Letter to Ralegh printed in the first install-
ment of The Faerie Queene, they do not seem defensible. There, Spenser
sets out his primary aim, which was to educate a “gentleman or noble per-
son in vertuous and gentle discipline,” a goal that he intended to pursue
in both its “Ethice” and its “polliticke consideration.”7 Given his deeply

7 Letter, in Hamilton, Faerie Queene, 714.

 1 INTRODUCTION TO SPENSER’S ART OF ROYAL ENCOMIUM 7

ingrained Christian Humanism, it is difficult to reconcile that aim with

the luminous depictions of Elizabeth in The Faerie Queene. Those of us
who are acquainted with the details of her life and her extraordinarily
accomplished but all-too-human character are likely to regard his depic-
tions as exquisitely beautiful but misleading, if not outright false.
As I discuss in Chapter 2, the poet’s self-presentation as a teacher of
ethical and political probity is difficult to reconcile with such praise, how-
ever common it may have been at the Elizabethan court. To Humanists
of the poet’s stripe, to delude a monarch about her nature and capa-
bilities was not a minor matter. In virtually all the discussions of praise
most widely known to the Elizabethans, flattery was roundly condemned
as demeaning to those who practiced it, dangerous to the state, and
repugnant to every right-thinking person. To advise monarchs to gov-
ern humbly, temperately, and wisely was a councilor’s highest calling.
To puff rulers up as if they were gods was to tempt them to trust their
own impulses in ways likely to end in disaster. In holding rose-colored
“mirrours” up to his queen, Spenser seems to be doing just that, exalting
her as if she were a celestial being reflecting the very light of God and
dispensing justice as if from the very throne of heaven. For a man like
Spenser to flatter the queen in that way ought to have been unthinkable.
But was it? Everything we know about the poet suggests that he was
ambitious, and that fact must give us pause. The continual, energetic
crafting of a public persona that occupied him throughout his life sug-
gests that his intent was not simply to teach, delight, and move others
to virtue but also to win fame and so to influence the queen and her
government. He had begun his adult career as a writer with an auda-
cious act of self-promotion, dedicating The Shepheardes Calender to his
celebrated acquaintance Sidney and arranging its printing in a finely illus-
trated, annotated edition, as if he were a celebrated writer. A year later,
he joined with a friend, the well-connected Cambridge scholar Gabriel
Harvey, to publish an exchange of letters displaying their learning and
their lofty connections. In remarks on early drafts of The Faerie Queene,
Spenser positioned himself as both the English Ovid and the English
Virgil. He later advertised the first installment of his ambitious poem by
taking one of the earliest and most celebrated book tours of the modern
era, traveling to London in the company of the influential royal counse-
lor and favorite Sir Walter Ralegh. The journey, which lasted from 1589
to 1590 or perhaps early 1591, included an audience in which he read
to the queen and received from her a singular honor, a substantial royal
8 D. STUMP

pension.8 Following up on his initial success, Spenser soon published

an account of the trip in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, along with
a flurry of shorter works that appeared in 1596. Spenser’s will to rise
was relentless, lending plausibility to the suspicion that, in addressing his
greatest poetic achievement to Elizabeth and the luminaries of her court,
the poet was engaged in a self-interested campaign to advance his own
literary and political career.9
We may be inclined to shrug off such concerns, supposing that in
flattering the queen, Spenser was only following the fashions of his day.
Sidney’s more exalted position made it easier to address her without flat-
tery so long as he expressed his criticism in respectful letters or in readily
deniable fictions. As a minor figure, Spenser had to be more circumspect.
In The Shepheardes Calender, published in late 1579 at the height of the
furor over the French marriage, he included veiled criticisms of Elizabeth
so bold that he thought it prudent to withhold his name from the title
page and, in the poem “To His Booke,” to call on Sidney for protection
until the work is “past ieopardee.”10 In the famous tribute to Elizabeth
as “Queene of shepheardes all” in the April Eclog, he also included a glow-
ing tribute to the queen. That such a supremely gifted writer deflected
anger away from himself with flattery in that way, particularly in a cause
such as the Anjou affair that was of vital importance to the Protestant
faction with which he identified, seems a betrayal of the very ethical and
political aims that defined him as a writer.
I say “seems” because thinking him inconsistent in this matter is
not our only option. Another possibility is that, as modern readers, we
are simply missing something that renders his praise of Elizabeth less
extravagant and self-serving than it seems. And there is reason to think
that we are. For one thing, elsewhere in his works, Spenser vehemently
denounces sycophants. For another, he continually sticks his neck out in
controversial matters in ways likely to offend Elizabeth. There is no evi-
dence that his contemporaries saw him as a flatterer, and they were in a

8 The only tangible evidence of the queen’s reaction is her unusually generous grant to

the poet of fifty pounds per year for life. See Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 231–40.
9 Hamilton, Faerie Queene, 727–35.

10 Greenlaw, Variorum, vol. 7: The Minor Poems, Part I, edited by Charles Grosvenor

Osgood, Henry Gibbons Lotspeich, and Dorothy E. Mason (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins Press, 1943), 5.
 1 INTRODUCTION TO SPENSER’S ART OF ROYAL ENCOMIUM 9

better position than we to judge, having been thoroughly steeped in tra-

ditions that excoriated false praise.
An initial question for this study is, then, whether the descriptions
of Elizabeth that strike us as flattery may not have seemed to Spenser
and the most perceptive of his original readers straightforwardly true.
Close reading of The Faerie Queene and its sources supports such a view.
That Spenser was no whitewasher of the queen’s character cannot, of
course, be definitively proven, since we have no way of penetrating his
intent. Once we understand the broader cultural context in which he
wrote, however, and look more closely at his elevated representations of
Elizabeth, a different way of reading them emerges.
My argument is that between Spenser’s view of human nature and
our own lies a great divide. Seeing the queen—and indeed all human
beings—in terms radically different from those of most modern readers,
he could say things from the heart, with a firm and realistic grasp of the
implications of his words, that most of us simply could not say of a polit-
ical leader without feeling degraded in our own eyes and in those of peo-
ple we respect.
To give a full hearing to both sides of the argument, I begin
Chapter 2 with modern perceptions of sycophancy, starting with Karl
Marx’s famous sneer that Spenser was the Queen’s “arse licking poet.”
After examining evidence for that view, I turn to perceptions of flattery
in the literary and ethical culture of Elizabethan England, focusing on
major ancient and contemporary authors who informed his education
at the Merchant Taylor’s School and Cambridge University. I then turn
to the works of Spenser himself, notably the attacks on sycophants in
Mother Hubberds Tale, The Teares of the Muses, and the Amoretti. From
the last of these, the principles guiding the poet’s representations of
Elizabeth in The Faerie Queene begin to emerge, with important implica-
tions for a right reading of the heroic poem.
Undertaking that reading is the task of the remainder of the book.
I begin with an exploration of the relation between Gloriana and
Elizabeth in Chapter 3, and then explore other figures for the queen
woven into the action of the poem in Chapters 4–6, and finish my cov-
erage of royal allegories with an examination of connections between
them and the Woman Clothed with the Sun prophesied to bring about
the Second Coming of Christ. My conclusion returns to the ques-
tion of Spenser’s remarkable divergence from Sidney in representing
the queen.
10 D. STUMP

2  The Humanists: Moral Instruction

and the Uses of History

Chapter 3 opens with a question inextricably connected with the prob-

lem of royal idealization. How are we to sort out the relation between
the historically specific topical allegories of queen and court in The Faerie
Queene and the more general moral, theological, historical, psycho-
logical, and cosmological allegories among which they jostle for atten-
tion? In both editions of the poem published during Spenser’s lifetime,
the poet announces a deceptively simple aim, promising on the title
page “twelue books, Fashioning xii. Morall vertues,” and promising in
his Letter to Ralegh “to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the
image of a braue knight, perfected in the twelue priuate morall vertues, as
Aristotle hath deuised, the which is the purpose of these first twelue bookes”
(Letter, 715). I say “deceptively” because it is hard to see that most of
the episodes contribute to that larger purpose. The problem is not only
that four of the seven virtues celebrated (holiness, chastity, courtesy, and
constancy) are not from Aristotle, but also that so much of the poem is
not about Arthur at all but about knights and ladies less exemplary than
he. In two of the books, moreover, even Arthur goes off course in his
quest for Gloriana.
What, moreover, are we to make of the very different impression of
the prince and of the other heroes of individual books suggested by the
Letter to Ralegh? There, Spenser characterizes himself as a “Poet his-
toricall” and treats his enormous undertaking as “an historicall fiction”
that renders into quasi-medieval verse “the historye of king Arthure”
(715–17). Although, in this, he claims to be following “all the antique
Poets historicall,” from Homer and Virgil to Ludovico Ariosto and
Torquato Tasso, the claim is strange. Hardly anything in the action
of the poem has much to do with Arthur as he is represented in the
“histories,” however fanciful, that were available to the poet and his
original English audience. Nor does most of the material in The Faerie
Queene derive from Arthurian romance.11

11 See Hugh MacLachlan, “Arthur, Legend of,” in The Spenser Encyclopedia, edited

by A.C. Hamilton, Donald Cheney, W.F. Blissett, David A. Richardson, and William W.
Barker (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 259–89.
 1 INTRODUCTION TO SPENSER’S ART OF ROYAL ENCOMIUM 11

This fact raises an obvious question: Why did Spenser so insistently

call his fictions “historicall” and treat “history” as the ideal mechanism
for teaching “Morall vertues”? Certainly, The Faerie Queene looks back
to a legendary British past comparable to that represented in the epic
accounts of the Trojan War, the conquests of Charlemagne, and the siege
of Jerusalem that Spenser took as his models. Had he drawn on earlier
material about Arthur as king, his subject would have fit the pattern.
Instead, however, he focused on Arthur as a young prince and mostly
made up his stories about him out of whole cloth. The elements of the
narrative that can rightly be called historical are designed to reflect the
Elizabethan rather than the Arthurian past.
To single out recent events in that way puts Spenser at odds with
Sidney, who in his Apology for Poetry12 famously draws on Aristotle’s
Poetics to argue that history is a less effective moral teacher than
poetry:

Aristotle himself, in his discourse of poesy, plainly determineth this ques-

tion, saying that Poetry is philosophoteron and spoudaioteron, that is to say,
it is more philosophical and more studiously serious than history. His rea-
son is, because poetry dealeth with katholou, that is to say, with the univer-
sal consideration, and history with kathekaston, the particular: ‘now’, saith
he, ‘the universal weighs what is fit to be said or done, either in likelihood
or necessity …, and the particular only marks whether Alcibiades did, or
suffered, this or that.’13

Because a history of Alcibiades’s career must cover many things (“this or

that”) that are of no ethical interest, a poem that focuses only on certain
episodes is a better teacher. One wonders why a poet intent on “fash-
ioning a gentleman or worthy person in vertuous and gentle discipline,” as
Spenser asserts he is in his Letter to Ralegh, would use the term “histor-
icall” to describe what is in fact almost entirely fictional and falls short of

12 Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, edited by Geoffrey Shepherd (New York: Barnes &

Noble, 1973), 105–7. There is reason to doubt that Sidney actually saw history as a teacher
inferior to poetry. His advice to his brother Robert and his friend Edward Denny prescribes
extensive reading in histories and none at all in works of poetry. See Stump, “Mapping,”
3–6.
13 Sidney, Apology, 109.
12 D. STUMP

exemplary morality? At best, the word “historicall” confuses the issue of

universality.14
In this study, I argue that Spenser took a very different view of history
than did Aristotle. In devising the “darke conceits” and “veiled” allegories
of The Faerie Queene, he aligned himself, not with the Greek philosophical
tradition, but with that of the ancient Hebrews and Christians, who con-
veyed insights into divine law, morality, theology, politics, and other sub-
jects through accounts of their past as the chosen people of God.

3  The Poet: Fictional History as Ethical Allegory

It is understandable that many who read The Faerie Queene today should
view its references to the life of Queen Elizabeth and others of her era
as something of a distraction. Time spent in footnotes is time away from
the colorful, romantic world of the poem. Nor have many recent aca-
demic critics been especially interested in topical readings of the poem,
though New Historicism has brought fresh attention to Spenser’s rela-
tions with the queen, the royal court, and government policy. Just as
Erich Auerbach, in his day, thought the crowds of historical figures in
Dante’s Divine Comedy a distraction from the lessons they were intended
to illustrate, so contemporary critics too often consider Spenser’s allu-
sions to Elizabethan political affairs a sideshow.15 The challenge, then,
is to understand why Spenser gave the queen and the history of her age
such emphasis in the Letter to Ralegh and the dedicatory sonnets, and
why we should care. Few commentators have concerned themselves with
the extent to which The Faerie Queene is what Spenser, in the Letter,
terms a “continued Allegory” of contemporary events,16 and only one

14 Since Spenser wrote the Letter to Ralegh before Sidney’s Apology appeared in 1595, he

may not have known the argument. It may, however, have come out in discussions of liter-
ary theory with Sidney at Leicester House in 1578–1579. See Hadfield, Life, 106–8.
15 Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, translated by

Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 175–76.

16 See J.E. Whitney, “The Continued Allegory in the First Book of the Faerie Queene,”

Transactions of the American Philological Association 19 (1888): 40–69 (Variorum, 1:

455–58); Lilian Winstanley, The Faerie Queene, Book I (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1915) (Variorum, 1: 460–65); and Frederick Padelford, The Political
and Ecclesiastical Allegory of the First Book of the “Faerie Queene” (Boston: Ginn & Co.,
1911) (Variorum, 1: 466–73). See also Frank Kermode, Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne (New
York, 1971); Michael O’Connell, Mirror and Veil: The Historical Dimension of Spenser’s
 1 INTRODUCTION TO SPENSER’S ART OF ROYAL ENCOMIUM 13

that I know of has sought, in a concerted way, to explain the enduring

importance that such a time-specific allegory might have.17
As I discuss in Chapter 3, most critics find the gravitas of the poem
in its ethical, theological, and political ideals. The curious thing about
Prince Arthur and the other principal heroes of The Faerie Queene, how-
ever, is that none of them is entirely exemplary. Why would Spenser
create a fiction, call it history, hold it up as a means to instill virtue in
others, and then focus on tangled and morally compromised actions of
just the sort that poetry is supposed to avoid? The failings of virtually all
Spenser’s most ethical characters stand in stark contrast to the far more
consistently exemplary nature of a classical hero such as Virgil’s Aeneas.
To understand Spenser’s ethical intentions, and their relation to his
notion of heroism, it is necessary to turn from classical epic to the Bible.
As I argue in the later sections of Chapter 3, understanding the implica-
tions of scriptural accounts of the image of God turns out to be impor-
tant in perceiving the ethical universals that underlie the poem—and,
more to our purpose, the way in which they are represented in allegorical
figures of Queen Elizabeth and her principal men.

4  The Queen: Elizabeth as Gloriana

That the Gloriana of the proems represents the queen is the most obvi-
ous of Spenser’s topical allegories. As I argue in Chapter 3, however,
the Faerie Queene is a far more complicated figure than has generally
been recognized. With deep roots in the Old and New Testaments and
more recent ones in English folklore and Elizabethan royal iconography,
Gloriana represents a triangulation to accomplish three overriding aims
of the poet: to celebrate the queen as part of a project, shared by Sidney
and others, to create for England a distinguished national literature; to
gain honor as an epic poet of the caliber of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, and
Tasso by depicting figures developed around the English founding myth

“Faerie Queene” (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1977); Thomas H.
Cain, Praise in “The Faerie Queene” (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1978);
and Robin Headlam Wells, Spenser’s “Faerie Queene” and the Cult of Elizabeth (New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1983).
17 John D. Staines, “The Historicist Tradition in Spenser Studies,” in The Oxford

Handbook of Edmund Spenser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 733–56.

14 D. STUMP

of Arthur and the Round Table; and, in doing so, to set forth, in the fleet-
ing details of a fictional Arthurian history, exemplary patterns of personal
virtue and vice and of social justice and political disorder.
To reconcile these jostling aims, Spenser devised a dominant central
character based on the truths of scripture as well as on the particulars
of Elizabethan history. Invoking Gloriana as a “Mirrour of grace and
Maiestie diuine,” he presents her as a queen so reflective of the “exceed-
ing light” of God that he is forced to enfold her countenance “In couert
vele …/ That feeble eyes your glory may behold” (I.proem.4). The
descriptions of Gloriana in the proems are a tissue of scriptural allusion,
fashioned from the creation story in Genesis, the epiphanies of Moses
and Elijah on Mt. Sinai and of the disciples at the Transfiguration of
Jesus, and the theology of the human person developed in the Epistles of
St. Paul. The view of human nature that emerges from these appropria-
tions allows Spenser to praise the flawed person of Elizabeth as loftily as
he does and still remains true to his ethical convictions.
In calling Gloriana is a “true glorious type” of the English queen
(I.proem.4), Spenser borrowed from scriptural exegesis a term com-
monly used of an exemplary person in the Old Testament who resem-
bles and foreshadows a still more perfect person in the New Testament.
Moses and Elijah are, in that sense, “types” of Christ. In an innovative
leap of poetic creativity, Spenser fashioned an entire imaginary world in
which characters from the dim Arthurian past serve as “types” of an early
modern Christian queen and her principal courtiers.
In focusing on the elaborate web of reflections of his own nation and
age in The Faerie Queene, I do not mean to suggest that other webs of
meaning are not important. One of Spenser’s most remarkable gifts as
a writer was the ability to convey discretely, yet simultaneously, multi-
ple kinds of fictive and historical meaning. Many episodes in the poem
involve purely conceptual allegories, representing abstract principles
through the words and actions of the characters. To the extent that his-
torical types are implicated, they do not detract from conceptual mean-
ing. They illustrate it. Throughout the book, I look for opportunities
to bring out the interplay of the conceptual and the topical, though my
stress is necessarily on the latter.
 1 INTRODUCTION TO SPENSER’S ART OF ROYAL ENCOMIUM 15

5  The Critics: The Faerie Queene

as “Continued Allegory”

This study takes seriously an idea that has not been carefully reconsid-
ered for many years. It explores Spenser’s own claim in the Letter to
Ralegh that he was writing a “continued Allegory,” not only to fashion
moral virtues but also to celebrate the reign of Elizabeth. From Spenser’s
lifetime to the 1930s, it was widely accepted that incidents in the poem
allude to events involving the queen and her reign. Early twentieth-cen-
tury academic scholars such as J.E. Whitney, Lilian Winstanley, and
Frederick Padelford, who are now known as “Old Historicists,” were the
most learned and productive of those who took Spenser’s claim seriously.
With the coming of the New Criticism, however, their influence waned.
Since World War II, sceptics of a continued topical allegory have been
widely influential. Most notable among them have been the greatest of
the twentieth-century editors of Spenser’s works, Edwin Greenlaw and
A.C. Hamilton. Although trained as a historicist, Greenlaw grew wary of
topical interpretations, drawing the conclusion, in his influential Studies
in Spenser’s Historical Allegory, that the contemporary allusions in The
Faerie Queene are always simple and fairly obvious and are included only
“by way of illustration or compliment or ornament, never sustained for
long, never based on an intimacy of detail….”18 Another influential
mid-twentieth-century critic, Albert Gough, took the more radical but
similar view that “a complete and consistent [historical] allegory is not
to be looked for. It is Spenser’s habit to give a hint of a political mean-
ing, and then to confuse the trail.”19 A.C. Hamilton agreed, contending
that even the best historicist criticism involves a “reductive translation
that confounds the comprehensiveness of the allegory” and that history
is so full of possible analogs that “Competing claims have tended to can-
cel each other and discredit the whole approach.”20 In his valuable and
influential monograph The Structure of Allegory in “The Faerie Queene,”
he portrayed most historicist interpretations as random and contrived,
arguing that “Identification of characters in the poem with certain

18 Greenlaw, Studies in Spenser’s Historical Allegory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,

1932), 96.
19 Greenlaw, Variorum, 5: 211.

20 Introduction to Book I, in The Faerie Queene, 1st ed., edited by A.C. Hamilton

(London: Longman, 1977), 24.

16 D. STUMP

historical figures fetches the wildest interpretations—subtle, logical, and

beyond all imagination. Any other identification serves as well, for each
is highly selective. What may logically fit one episode twists and stretches
the others upon the rack of the reader’s own dark conceit.” Driving the
point home by showing that Book I can be read as an allegory of the
Russian Revolution, he went on to raise his primary concern. It was sim-
ple. Focusing on contemporary allusions draws readers away from the
primary aim of the poem, which was, in his view, to teach the “moral
or spiritual.”21 Accordingly, the annotations in his remarkable editions
of The Faerie Queene explain only the most obvious of the poet’s con-
temporary references, and The Spenser Encyclopedia, for which he was the
general editor, gives relatively little attention to the poem’s allusions to
Elizabeth and her reign.
What Hamilton, Greenlaw, and those who accepted their strictures
against extended topical interpretation did not notice was the reductive
nature of their position. To keep to the fore questions that they saw as
important, they pushed others to the rear, and in the process ignored
two important points. One is that, judging from his own comments,
Spenser was interested in drawing out of the particulars of Elizabethan
history the very universals that most interested the New Critics.22 The
other is that, in teaching universals by this means, Spenser was primarily
concerned that his readers be informed in noble discipline. Given that
overriding intent, what better way to engage them than by invoking
ethical quandaries encountered at the highest levels of their own gov-
ernment. National struggles and debates that they had lived through
themselves would have lent compelling immediacy to the ethical issues
that Spenser was raising. I cannot think that, had he foreseen that
a modern reader might one day apply insights from the Legend of
Holiness to the Russian Revolution, Spenser would have been displeased.
Such an analysis would have demonstrated precisely what he had mar-
shaled all his ingenuity and imagination to convey: a deep understand-
ing of human nature, our vulnerability to false shows of rectitude, our
love of power and display, our witting or unwitting flirtations with the
Satanic, our susceptibility to discouragement and despair, and our

21 The Structure of Allegory in “The Faerie Queene” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 9.
22 Michael O’Connell suggests that “The moral allegory is necessarily prior; the reader
must see into himself before he is prepared to see into history” (68). I suspect that the
reverse is true, at least in the initial “fashioning” of virtue.
 1 INTRODUCTION TO SPENSER’S ART OF ROYAL ENCOMIUM 17

too-ready belief that we can simply attack a pervasive social evil and
defeat it, once and for all. To understand one young and idealistic six-
teenth-century revolutionist such as the Redcrosse Knight is to under-
stand many in later centuries.23
Readers closer to the reign of Elizabeth, and more personally invested
in the issues and events that shaped it, saw much that was topical in
the poem. The earliest known commentator, John Dixon, who around
1597 scribbled his thoughts in the margins a first edition of The Faerie
Queene, identifies Una as Elizabeth, Arthur as a distant ancestor of the
queen, the Great Dragon slain by Redcrosse as “Antichristian religion,”
and Duessa as Mary, Queen of Scots, a “Romanish Harlot” whom Dixon
regarded as the most important “maintainer” of false Catholic reli-
gion in England while she lived.24 At about the same time, James VI of
Scotland recognized his mother, Mary Stuart, in the character of Duessa
in Book V and penned a furious letter to the English government ask-
ing that Spenser be punished. In the seventeenth century, John Dryden
asserted that “the original of every knight was then living in the court of
Queen Elizabeth; and [Spenser] attributed to each of them that virtue,
which he thought most conspicuous in them.”25 In the eighteenth cen-
tury, John Upton—the first editor of The Faerie Queene to include exten-
sive annotations—wrote that it balances two kinds of content, “moral
allegory with historical allusion,” and identified a number of its topical
references, including links connecting Francis, Duke of Anjou, and his
emissary Jean de Simier with Braggadocchio and Trompart in Book II.26
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Sir Walter Scott also saw the
poem through a historical lens, treating the adventures of the Knight
of Holiness in Book I as “a peculiar and obvious, though not a uni-
form, reference to the history of the Church of England as established

23 Against critics who deny the applicability of the topical allegory to other times and cul-

tures, O’Connell rightly argues that Spenser “avoids limiting … sacred myth to fulfillment
here and now; other godly princes and other history, past or future, may equally partake”
(43). See also Kermode, 12–32, 36–59.
24 John Dixon, The First Commentary on “The Faerie Queene,” edited by Graham Hough

(Privately printed, 1964), annotations on I.i.3, vii.1, x.60, xi.motto, xii.motto and 10. On
Scott, see Staines, 733–56, especially 736.
25 “Discourse on the Original and Progress of Satire,” in Essays of John Dryden, edited by

W.P. Ker, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900), 2.28.

26 Upton, ed., The Faerie Queene, 2 vols. (London, 1758), Preface xxxl and I.xiii.50n.,

II.iii.4n., quoted in Variorum, 1: 264, 2: 206.

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Mostyn took it all as a joke, much to the gardener's relief. It was a
perfect June morning: the sun shone in at the latticed window, bearing the
scent of roses and jasmine, and he felt that he had awakened to a new day, a
new life. How different this was to his dingy London lodgings! How
different, even, to the pretentious gloom of his father's house! Yet
everything about him was his own, absolutely his own! The blood coursed
quickly through his veins. How could he be angry with Willis?

Mostyn proceeded to put some questions as to Rada. The girl's name

came glibly to his lips. A desire had come upon him, born, no doubt, partly
of that strange fascination which she exerted and partly of the revelation of
his own masculine power which had followed her fear of an indefinite
danger, to master the little vixen, as he mentally described her, to curb and
break her in as an untrained filly—he was already beginning to use sporting
metaphor, even to himself.

But Willis, who appeared very ready to discuss Rada, almost took
Mostyn's breath away by his first statement.

"She's a hangel!" he said emphatically.

"A what?" Mostyn had regarded Rada in anything but an angelic light.

"A hangel," repeated the gardener, laying great stress on the aspirate. He
proceeded to sing Rada's praises with evident enjoyment, and palpably from
a sense of conviction. She was, it appeared, although as poor as a church
mouse, the Lady Bountiful to all the cottage folk in the neighbourhood, by
whom she was simply adored. She would minister comforts to the sick and
needy, often little more than a cheerful word and the sunlight of her
presence, but no less welcome for all that. She would take charge of unruly
children and attend to the house-keeping in the unavoidable absence of the
mother; she would cook little dainties with her own hands; she had an
extraordinary capacity for lulling restless babies to sleep. Willis declared
stoutly that she had pulled his own little daughter through a fever when the
doctor had been despondent, and she was not afraid of infection either, he
added proudly.
 Here, indeed, was Rada in a new light! What a queer and complex little
creature she must be! She had treated him with such shocking rudeness: he
had thought her the very contrary to the "hangel" described by Willis, but
now it was evident that there were depths in the girl's nature which had not
yet been revealed to him.

Having praised Rada to the full, Willis proceeded to abuse her father,
and that in no measured terms. He was a shiftless, idle ne'er-do-well, who
had lost all pretensions to being considered a gentleman, though up in
London, Willis had heard, he did play the "high and mighty." He went about
to race meetings when he could, and had sometimes been away for days
without leaving provision for his daughter. He kept one or two race-horses
at Treves's stables, but had not brought off a win for some time past. When
at home he lounged about in his shirt-sleeves, read the sporting papers, and
drank himself silly. Rada, very naturally, found her own distractions, and
her chief joy was to career about the country upon her black mare, Bess, a
creature as wild as herself.

"The captain don't take no stock of his girl," said Willis emphatically,
"an' he'll be sorry for it one of these days. I see her about with young Jack
Treves more'n enough, an' Jack ain't the right sort for her, not by a long
way."

This was a revelation at which Mostyn felt vaguely annoyed. He took an

immediate dislike to Jack Treves. Yet why should he worry himself over
Rada's flirtations?

Later that morning, while he ate a comfortable breakfast served up by

Mrs. Willis, he heard all the gardener's ideas recapitulated by the good
woman. She was just as emphatic on the subject of the captain as her
husband had been, nor did she swerve from her opinion when she learnt that
Mostyn was already acquainted with the Armitages, though the knowledge
of this fact reduced Willis to awkward silence and to much rubbing of his
jaw.

Rada, it appeared, had left the cottage early that morning, probably, Mrs.
Willis opined, to return home, though it was quite possible she might have
gone to other friends. Captain Armitage had been on the drink, and was best
left alone.

After an hour or so spent in surveying his new domain, and in discussing

plans for the future with the Willis's, Mostyn set out to pay a visit at Barton
Mill House. Captain Armitage might be in an objectionably bibulous
condition, but Mostyn was not afraid of meeting him.

Of course, he told himself that he wanted to discuss the matter of Castor,

and that there was really no time for delay; also that Captain Armitage
might very well introduce him to the trainer, William Treves; all of which
was good and plausible, but it was neither of the horse Castor nor of the
trainer that Mostyn thought, as with some difficulty he found his way
through the narrow lanes to Mill House: his reflections were concentrated
upon Rada.

He found Captain Armitage at home, but to his great disappointment

Rada was not at the Mill House, nor had Captain Armitage the smallest idea
where she had gone to. He didn't seem to mind. He laughed immoderately
when he heard the story of the rencontre at the Grange the night before, and
conjectured that Rada must have gone off to stay with some friends of hers,
some folk who were accustomed to her erratic ways, and who lived in the
neighbourhood of Newmarket. She had turned up at the Mill House, it
appeared, quite early in the morning, had selected some books from her
little library, had had Bess saddled, and had then ridden off. Captain
Armitage had not seen her because he was in bed.

"We don't always hit it off together," he explained jerkily, "and Rada's
quite capable of taking care of herself. She is a little devil, but I like her
spirit."

Mostyn found it difficult to reconcile the divergent views of his gardener

and of Captain Armitage as to Rada's character, but he did not feel called
upon to make any comment upon the subject. Personally he was inclined to
agree with the captain.

Of course Captain Armitage was very surprised to receive a visit from

Mostyn, and he broke off into a volley of oaths when he learned that the
latter had profited under the will of Anthony Royce; this, though Mostyn
did not give the full particulars as to his strange bequest, seeing no reason
why he should do so, but merely mentioned that he had inherited the
Grange and a certain sum of money as well.

"He never left me a penny, not a brass farthing," said Captain Armitage
solemnly, "yet I was one of his oldest friends, a school-fellow and all the
rest of it." This was a lie, and Mostyn knew it to be a lie, but the matter was
not worth discussing.

The captain did not present an imposing figure that morning. Mostyn
found him lounging in a disreputably worn arm-chair, clad in a soiled but
brilliantly-flowered dressing-gown, smoking an old meerschaum pipe, and
perusing a sporting paper. His white hair was untidy, his beard unkempt,
and his slippers down at the heel. The little sitting-room was dingy and
uncared for; Rada had evidently abandoned the hopeless task of tidying it.

"I told you that I was a poor man, Mr. Clithero," Captain Armitage said,
waving a deprecating hand round the room, "and now you can see for
yourself." Suddenly his dull eyes brightened. "You say Royce has left you
some brass," he insinuated. "Have you thought better of that offer I made
you the other day?"

"That's what I'm here for," explained Mostyn. "Are you still willing to
sell Castor, Captain Armitage?"

"I should say I was, my boy." The old man sprang from his chair with
something of the nervous energy that Mostyn remembered he had displayed
when on the coach. "Fifteen hundred pounds! Why, it would be the making
of me just now." He spoke eagerly. "I know how I could turn it into five,
into ten thousand. There's Cardigan, a sure thing for the Liverpool Cup, and
Boscowen, a perfect snip at Sandown. Give me fifteen hundred down, and
I'll make a fortune. You shall have the tips, too; I'll throw them into the
bargain."

So it came about that, without loss of time, Captain Armitage, muttering

and mumbling to himself, had shuffled out of the room, leaving Mostyn to
gaze out of the uncleaned window over a strip of garden where the grass
grew rank, and where weeds choked the few hardy flowers that had
endured. Whatever she might be elsewhere, Rada evidently took no pride in
her own home; Mostyn told himself that the Mill House, practically little
more than a tumble-down cottage, was one of the most dreary spots he had
ever visited.

It was not long before the captain reappeared, a little more spruce in his
attire and ready to go out. It was, it appeared, not more than half an hour's
walk to the training stables, and there was no reason why the bargain should
not be clinched at once.

This was all very well, but Mostyn did not feel capable of relying upon
his own judgment, nor did he trust Captain Armitage's word. Fifteen
hundred pounds was a large sum, and not to be merely thrown away to put
cash into the pocket of a drunkard. Would he do well to purchase Castor?
Certainly Sir Roderick had admitted the value of the colt. That went for a
good deal, but at the bottom of his heart Mostyn knew that his desire to own
the horse had something to do with the struggle which he felt, in an
indefinite sort of way, had commenced between himself and Rada. "I'm a
girl, but I'll back myself to win a Derby before you!" she had cried
contemptuously, and the words had galled and stung him. She had great
faith in Castor, he knew that; well, it would be a fitting punishment upon
her if, by extraordinary luck, he contrived to carry off the race with that
particular horse. Mostyn was not spiteful by nature, but he was very human.

As they walked together, passing through the little town and then
emerging upon open country, Captain Armitage exerted his powers of
persuasion to the full, and he had a plausible tongue. Mostyn had an eye for
a horse, so the old man asserted, and he had recognised that fact upon
Derby day, or he would not have dreamed of making his offer. He had taken
a fancy to Mostyn from the first, especially because the latter had taken his
joking in good part. What he was doing was purely out of personal
consideration.

"Look here, Clithero,"—he halted in that sudden and abrupt manner

peculiar to him, and seized the young man by the arm—"we don't want a lot
of palaver over this business. Treves will tell you that the colt's all right, and
his word's as good as gospel. Settle on the nail and we'll cry quits at a
thousand."

They reached the training stables at last, a low narrow building, lying a
little back from the road, a building that formed three sides of a square and
was approached by a large gate. Beyond it, and indeed, on either side of the
road, was open level country. "A capital pitch for exercising," as Captain
Armitage put it, pointing to a row of horses that were following one another
in steady line over the down.

Castor had just returned from exercise, and they found him in his stable
where he had been groomed by one of the boys. William Treves himself, an
important personality, a man who had accumulated a considerable fortune,
but who had no pride about him, and who was not ashamed of his humble
origin, nor of the fact that he had never acquired a mastery of the king's
English, discoursed volubly on the perfections of the colt. Apparently he
already knew of Captain Armitage's desire to find a purchaser. The man
gave Mostyn the impression of honesty.

As for Castor, little as Mostyn knew of horses he was impressed by the

animal's appearance. Stripped of his clothes, he appeared a black colt of
such magnificent proportions as to give one the idea that he was a three-
year-old, instead of a nursery youngster.

After much talking, in which Mostyn took small part, the bargain was
struck. In return for his cheque for a thousand pounds, Mostyn became the
proprietor of "as fine an 'oss as the eye of man could look upon;" so
William Treves put it.

"'E 'as a terrific turn of speed," the trainer continued, "and there isn't a
three-year-old in this country that can 'old 'im at a mile at weight for age. I
borrowed a couple of Colonel Turner's youngsters the other day to try 'im
with, an' 'e left 'em fairly standing still, and the Colonel's 'ed man went 'ome
with a wonderful tale about 'em, although 'e didn't know I'd put an extra five
pound on Castor. Take my advice, if you're set on winnin' next year's Derby,
don't pull 'im out too often this year. 'E's entered for the Eclipse at Sandown
and the National Produce Breeders' Stakes, and you might let 'im run about
four times just to give 'im a breather and get 'im used to racecourse crowds.
No man livin' can say to-day wot will win the Derby next year, but if 'e
trains on and puts on more bone, as I expect 'e will, 'e must stand a grand
chance."

"You hear that? He'll win the Derby for you." Armitage smote his young
friend heartily on the back as he spoke. "Take my word for it."

Mostyn was content with his purchase, proud of himself. There was but
one hitch, and that occurred later in the morning when Armitage and Treves
had moved away to inspect a new arrival at the stables, leaving Mostyn
standing alone, a little awkwardly, in the great square yard.

A young man approached him, a tall, broad-shouldered youth, good-

looking after a coarse and vulgar style. He was aggressively horsey in his
attire, and wore a cap set at the back of his head, displaying sleek hair
plastered down over his forehead. This, as Mostyn was subsequently to
learn, was Jack Treves, the son of the trainer. He had a familiar way of
speaking, and made use of slang which jarred at once upon Mostyn's ears.

He began by making a few casual remarks, then he jerked his head in the
direction of his father and of Captain Armitage. "I hear you've bought
Castor," he said. "A fine horse, sir."

"Yes," replied Mostyn, "I've bought the colt."

"Well, it may be all right." Jack Treves shook his head doubtfully. "And
of course the captain can do what he likes with his own—that is, if it is his
own—but I'll bet there'll be ructions, for Castor's entered for the Derby in
the name of Miss Armitage, and she's always looked upon him as her
particular property." He stooped and picked up a wisp of straw, passing it
between his fingers.

"Her property?" faltered Mostyn. "I don't understand."

Jack Treves nibbled at his straw. "The captain didn't tell you then? I
thought not. You see, when he went broke three years ago and appeared in
the forfeit list at Weatherby's, she sold all her mother's jewels and paid his
debts, and it was then that she registered her colours—
 "Her colours!" gasped Mostyn. "Do you mean to tell me that Rada—er,
Miss Armitage—has registered racing colours?"

"Lor lummy, yes!" was the reply, spoken with a certain malice. "A bit
young, of course, but she's not like other girls. She's not had the best of
luck, though, up to date, and that's why she's so keen on seeing the lemon
and lavender carried to victory at Epsom next year. She simply dotes on
Castor, and considers that the colt is hers in return for that jewellery."

Jack Treves threw his whittled straw away. "I guess," he said, "there'll be
the devil of a row."

CHAPTER X.

MOSTYN LEARNS HIS ERROR.

Some seven or eight days after the sale of Castor, Captain Armitage
reclined at his ease in the dilapidated arm-chair which he particularly
affected. He had grown to like the untidiness and the dirt of his dismal little
sitting-room, and he would not have altered his immediate surroundings for
anything better, even had he been able to do so.

It was about nine o'clock at night. He had partaken of a meagre supper—

he never ate much at the best of times—served up in haphazard fashion by
the one wretched serving maid, a poor little slut, who did the whole work of
the house. The plates and dishes had not been cleared away but were piled
up anyhow on a clothless table by his side, and within easy reach of his
hand was a bottle of champagne, three parts empty, with which he had been
regaling himself. Close by, too, was another bottle which contained brandy;
Captain Armitage was very fond of champagne, only he used to say that he
preferred it diluted—but he was accustomed to dilute it with brandy instead
of water.
 He had returned from London the day before, where he had had what he
would himself have called "a good time" upon the proceeds of Mostyn's
cheque for a thousand pounds. What had become of the money and how
much remained over was a secret only known to Captain Armitage; at any
rate, to judge by his complacent smile, the smile of a man who was three
parts intoxicated—he was not suffering from any pricking of conscience for
having disposed of property which did not actually belong to him. He knew
that there would be an unpleasant scene when Rada returned, and there
were times when he was a little afraid of his petulant, self-willed daughter;
but Captain Armitage was the kind of man who lived in the present, and did
not unnecessarily worry himself about what might come to pass in the
future. He had had his thousand pounds, and that, after all, was the great
point.

He had been obliged to tell a lie or so, but that was a matter of very
minor importance. He had explained to Mostyn, who had come to him hot
with excitement, and dragging young Treves in his wake, to demand an
explanation, that it was by Rada's own wish and permission that he had sold
the horse. This was the same tale that he had spun for the benefit of old
Treves when the idea of raising money upon his daughter's property had
first occurred to him. Mostyn had been silenced, but the ominous giggle
which had followed him when he turned away was by no means reassuring.
He had felt a strange desire to turn back and punch Jack Treves's head, all
the more so since the latter had spoken of Rada in a familiar manner, which
he resented; but he had restrained himself for the sake of his dignity.

In the days which followed Mostyn had worried Rada's father not a little.
He had wanted the girl's address in order that he might write to her, but this
Captain Armitage had professed himself quite unable to supply. The girl
came and went as she chose, he didn't worry his head about her. She was all
right with her Newmarket friends—but he couldn't even remember their
name. Finally Captain Armitage departed for London, and then Mostyn
hung day after day about Barton Mill House keeping watch for the girl's
return. He felt certain that her father had made no provision for her if she
arrived home before he did. Very often Mostyn called himself a fool for his
pains, for what, after all, was Rada to him? It was all very well to tell
himself that he wanted confirmation of her father's story about Castor from
her lips—that was true enough, but he wanted more besides, and knew it. It
was the magnetic thrill of his whole being induced by her presence that he
desired, and, though he could not account for it, the feeling was there and
had to be recognised.

Captain Armitage, alone in his dingy sitting-room, had just drained his
glass, crossed his slippered feet, which were stretched out upon a second
chair, dropped a stump of his cigar—it had been a fine cigar—one of a
highly-priced box that he had brought back with him from London—and
closed his heavy lids, preparatory to slumber, when Rada herself swept into
the room.

She came in like an avalanche, slamming the door behind her; for a
moment she stood contemptuously regarding the semi-intoxicated man,
then she unceremoniously aroused him to full consciousness of her
presence by jerking away the chair upon which his feet reclined. Captain
Armitage sat up grumbling and rubbing his heavy eyes.

The girl stood before him, indignation plainly written on every feature.
"Father, you've sold Castor!" she cried. "I met Jack Treves not half an hour
ago, and he told me. It's the truth, I suppose?"

The man gazed at her vacantly. He had not expected to see his daughter
that night, and he was not prepared with any explanation. Weakly he tried to
turn the tables. "Where have you been?" he asked, plaintively, "leaving your
poor old father all alone like this——" She deigned no reply. He knew
where she had been.

"It's the truth, I suppose?" she repeated. "I want to hear it from your own
lips."

"Well, you see, my dear," he began, "we are very poor——"

"Is it true?" Rada's lips were compressed together; she was drawing long
deep breaths.

He went on mumbling. "We must live. I had debts. They had to be paid
somehow. A thousand pounds——"
 "So it is true. You've sold Castor for a thousand pounds! You pretended
that you were doing it with my permission. Oh father! oh father!"

Her mood changed with its usual lightning velocity. Her eyes were
brimming over with tears. Her father was the one man with whom she
always sought to hold her temper in sway. It was the instinct of a lifetime.
Pitiful, degrading object as he was, long ago as she had given up all hope of
effecting any reformation in him, of making him, at least, clean, and manly,
and wholesome, he was yet her father, and she had lived with him ever
since the death of her mother when she was little more than a child. His
deterioration had been gradual; she had fought and struggled against it. She
had taken upon herself responsibilities unsuited to a girl of her age, but all
her efforts had been in vain. She despised the degraded old man, and that
because she saw him with no prejudiced eyes, she saw him for what he was,
but at the same time—he was her father.

Regardless of his protests she began to clear away the bottles from the
table; she did so by force of habit, though she knew quite well that as soon
as her back was turned he would be after them again; there had been times,
however, when he had not allowed her to exercise even this authority, when
he had stormed in violent fashion, when he had even struck her. On this
occasion, however, he ventured nothing more than a feeble protest, lolling
back in his chair, smiling foolishly.

"A thousand pounds, my dear, think of it!" he muttered with a drunken

chuckle, "think of it! Needs must when the devil drives, you know, and he's
been driving at me, goading at me—oh, yes! an ugly devil, and a lot of little
imps besides. They wanted gold, and they've got it. But we're going to make
our fortunes," he went on, in maddening sing-song monotone, "for there's
enough left to back our luck at Sandown and Ascot. That's what I had in
mind, my dear. A quick fortune—cash in hand in a week or so—not to wait
a whole year for the Derby, and then perhaps come down. There's Pollux,
remember—old Rory's Pollux." His head lolled over to one side, and he
spoke sleepily. "Besides, young Clithero will give you the colt back when
he knows the truth—it's ten to one on that. It'll be all right for you, my dear,
and you needn't worry about me."
 "Listen to me, father," said Rada, biting her lip to restrain an outburst of
anger and disgust at the meanness, the vileness of the whole thing. Her
father had calculated upon Mostyn Clithero giving her back her horse when
he found out how he had been defrauded. He did not mind what might be
thought of himself—he had had his thousand pounds. She dashed her tears
away, and stood up by the cupboard before which she had been stooping,
attempting to hide the bottles away. "Listen to me," she went on, "try to
understand me if you can. Castor was my horse. You gave him to me when
he was foaled. Now he has a big chance for the Derby. He was entered in
my name. I was his registered proprietor—he was to be ridden in my
colours. All my dreams were of Castor; I would sit building castles in the
air by the hour together. It brought colour into my life and made me glad to
live. You don't know what it has been to me; you cannot understand how I
delighted in watching Castor at his gallops, whispering to myself, 'The
horse is mine—mine—and in two years' time—in eighteen months' time—
in fifteen months' time—I shall watch my horse winning the big race!'—
that's how I used to go on; I counted the months, the days, even the hours.
All my pride was centred in Castor; and you have sold him—sold him for a
thousand pounds!"

Her voice quivered and shook. She was speaking with an intensity of
feeling unusual to her. "I watched the little colt as he grew up," she went on,
and her tone was low and plaintive now. "I fed him with my own hand, just
as I feed Bess, and he got to know and to love me. I gloried over him as I
saw him growing handsomer and stronger—growing into what I had
expected he would. I knew he would win the Derby for me, every instinct I
have told me so. And do you know, father"—she drew a little closer to the
old man's chair, but she was not looking at him, she was absorbed in the
train of her own thoughts—"it was not only pride that possessed me; Castor
was going to make our fortune for us—I felt that, too—and the money
would be mine, mine to do with as I wished. I used to sit and dream of the
way I should spend that money. We were going to leave this ugly cottage,
and have everything nice and pretty about us; we were going to start a new
life altogether." Poor Rada! It was such a vain, such a hopeless dream! for,
as far as her father was concerned at least, any new life was out of the
question.
 She caught her breath, and went on speaking, more to herself than to
him, quite heedless of the fact that she received no answer. "Oh! it would
have been my money—mine, just as Castor was my horse. If you knew, if
you could guess, how I have built upon this! But now there is to be no more
dreaming for me: the gold has been fairy gold, it has slipped through my
fingers like so many dead leaves. You have taken Castor from me—you
have sold him for a thousand pounds! And now what is to be done?"

She choked down her sobs, clenched her little fists with characteristic
energy, vaguely conscious of the futility of her emotional outburst, and her
natural energy of disposition once more coming to the fore, she took a quick
step towards her father. "What is to be done?" she repeated.

There was no reply, save for a dull, unintelligent grunt. Captain

Armitage's head was lolling over the side of his chair, his eyes were closed,
his mouth open. He was asleep—he had been asleep all the while.

Rada's first impulse was to take him by the shoulders and to shake him
violently, for, small as she was, she knew that she possessed more strength
than he. Her nerves were tingling with suppressed passion, her cheeks were
suffused with colour. She touched him on the shoulder; he stirred and
muttered, then his hand went out instinctively towards the table as though in
search of his glass.

Rada drew back, nauseated. She knew that it was hopeless to protest
with such a man as her father—she must leave him to himself. It was for
her alone to act.

A few moments later, having loosened his collar and settled him as
comfortably as she could in his chair, a horrible task to which she was no
stranger, she stole quietly out of the room.

That same evening, Pierce Trelawny, who had been detained by his
father at Randor Park, arrived to stay the night with Mostyn at
Partinborough Grange. It was too late to visit the paddocks that night, and,
unfortunately, Pierce had to hurry on to London by an early train the next
day; but it was arranged that Willis should take charge of his bag, so that a
hurried inspection of Mostyn's purchase might be made the first thing in the
morning, after which Pierce could walk or drive to the station.

The two young men had discussed the situation as they sat together in
the drawing-room of the Grange after dinner. Pierce had learnt the full facts
by letter, and, acting upon Mostyn's instructions, he had kept the secret to
himself. He agreed with Mostyn that this was the wisest plan, though he
asked, and obtained, permission to reveal everything to his uncle, Sir
Roderick, who, he opined, might be of considerable assistance—if he chose
—to Mostyn in a difficult task.

For himself, he was prepared to lend all the help in his power, and place
his experience—such as it was—quite at Mostyn's disposition. It would
distract his thoughts from Cicely, and from the hardship of his own year's
probation. "The governor hasn't yielded an inch," he explained mournfully.
"And, of course, I've written everything to Cicely. I can't make the old man
out. He threatens me with all sorts of horrible consequences if I disobey
him, and all the time there's a sort of twinkle in his eye, as if he found it
amusing to bully me. But about yourself? You've got to buck up, you know.
There's no time to be lost."

Mostyn acquiesced. "I've made a start by purchasing Castor," he said.

"That has cost me a thousand pounds."

"Cheap, too, if the horse is all you tell me," commented the other. "Well,
you may run Castor for the Guineas and for the Derby, but you mustn't
neglect your other chances. What about the Royal Hunt Cup? That is the
race which falls first upon your list, I believe."

Mostyn quite agreed that the Royal Hunt Cup must not be overlooked,
although there only remained a fortnight or three weeks in which to
purchase a horse, already entered, for this race. "I suppose I ought to have
set about it before," he said rather limply, "but the fact is, you see, I've been
busy getting this house in order, and——" he broke off suddenly. He did not
like to tell Pierce the actual reason for which, having purchased Castor, he
had remained on at Partinborough. The fact was that he had been on the
look-out every day for Rada, that he could not tear himself away.
 Suddenly he blurted out the truth. "The girl fascinates me," he said, in
conclusion. "I can't understand how, or why. I don't quite know if I hate or
love her, but I'm quite sure that I want to master her, to punish her somehow
for having mocked me. She has challenged me twice, and I want to be even
with her. That's how we stand." He blushed as he spoke, staring viciously at
the toe of his shoe.

Pierce gave a low whistle. "You're in love, Mostyn," he said, "and you've
taken the complaint rather badly and in a particularly dangerous style. I
shall have to get you out of this, and as quickly as possible: you may think
of Rada as much as you like next year, or when you've won your title to the
legacy, but till then you must be on probation, old chap, just as I am."

Mostyn agreed that his friend was right, and so it was decided between
them that he should join Pierce in London in two or three days' time, and
that they should devote their energies to finding suitable horses to run for
the Hunt Cup as well as the Goodwood Cup a little later on. As a necessary
preliminary step, Pierce had already entered Mostyn for the National
Sporting Club and also for the Albert and the Victoria, and the sooner he
put in an appearance there, to make the acquaintance of the leading sporting
men, the better.

The two friends reached the paddocks very early the next morning, and
Pierce looked Castor over before the colt was led out of his stable to
exercise. He scrutinised the animal with the eye of a man of experience, and
commented upon this and that point in a manner which filled Mostyn with
envy.

"Plenty of mettle and spirit," he said, dodging quickly out of the way, as
Castor, conscious no doubt of a strange hand upon his hock, pranced to and
fro in his stall. "In fine condition, too. I can see nothing to carp at; if half of
old William Treves's tales are true, I should say you've got a good thing,
Mostyn, and cheap at the price you paid."

Pierce's good opinion was in no way altered when he had seen the horse
at exercise. He stood with his friend by the stable wall facing the great bare
track of country, over which Treves's horses followed each other in straight,
unbroken line. William Treves himself was absent that day at Newmarket,
but presently the two young men were joined by his son Jack, who strolled
leisurely up, and began to talk in his usual familiar fashion.

Mostyn had seen a good deal of Jack Treves during the past week, and
nearer acquaintance had not improved his liking. He was quite sure that the
trainer's son had conceived a jealousy of him, imagining, no doubt, that he
and Rada were old friends. It was very evident by the way he spoke of her
that Jack considered he had a claim upon Rada's affections, a claim which
Mostyn, jealous in his turn, resented.

Having seen Castor put through his paces, Pierce was loud in his praise
of Mostyn's purchase, repeating all he had said in the stable, and even
appealing to Jack Treves to confirm his opinion. The latter stood lounging
against a post, smoking a cigarette, his thick lips parted in an irritating
smile. Mostyn could not help thinking that there was something at the back
of his brain to which he did not wish to give expression. He had laughed
outright once or twice without apparent cause, and there was a palpable
sneer on his lips as he turned to Mostyn and informed him that Miss
Armitage had returned the day before, and would no doubt put in an
appearance that morning.

Jack had divined correctly. It was as Castor, bestridden by a stable lad,

was drawn up almost opposite to them, and while the attention of all three
was bestowed upon the horse, that Mostyn heard a voice close behind him,
calling him by name, and turned to find himself face to face with Rada. She
had ridden up upon Bess, had dismounted, leaving the mare to wander at
will, and had approached unnoticed.

"Mr. Clithero."

Mostyn felt that peculiar thrill pass through him which was always
called forth by her presence. As on a former occasion her Christian name
had nearly escaped his lips, but this time he was able to check himself.
There was a glitter in the girl's eyes, and her lips were drawn together in a
manner which appeared to him rather ominous. It was the first time he had
seen her dressed in a riding habit, and he thought how well it became her; at
the same time he was glad that she had not abandoned her straw hat, the red
poppies of which toned in so well with the dark tresses beneath them. She
was looking deliriously pretty, but Mostyn wondered in what mood she
would display herself. He had been forced to accept Captain Armitage's
assurances about Castor, but, all the same, he had not been wholly satisfied.
He remembered her challenge as to winning a Derby, "with some chance of
success, too," she had said. Could she have been thinking of Castor?

But of course the colt was his by every right. He turned, smiling brightly,
and extended his hand to the girl. She responded, but her fingers lay cold
and passive in his grasp. "We've been watching Castor at exercise, Miss
Armitage," he said with enthusiasm. "He's a beauty, and I can't tell you how
grateful I am to you for letting me have him. I've brought my friend Mr.
Trelawny to see him: you know Mr. Trelawny, I think."

Pierce, with every intention of saying the right thing, piled fuel to the
fire as he, in his turn, shook hands with Rada. "I was awfully surprised," he
said, "to learn that Mostyn had been lucky enough to buy such a horse as
Castor. I was saying only just now, that if one could judge of a Derby
winner from a two-year-old——"

The frown on Rada's forehead deepened, her lips puckered up, and her
uncontrollable tongue had its way. "I should hate Castor to win the Derby
for Mr. Clithero or for anyone else. Castor is my horse, and he was sold
without my consent." She turned passionately upon Mostyn, her black eyes
shining. "It was mean and cowardly of you!" she said. "You did it because
of what I said to you the other day. You did it to spite me! Can't you fight
fair? Aren't there enough horses in the world for you to buy, without
robbing me of the one ambition, the one hope of my life?"

Jack Treves chuckled. The scene had begun just as he had anticipated.
But Rada turned and fixed her eyes indignantly upon him, and he took the
hint and moved away.

"Miss Armitage, I had no idea," stammered Mostyn; "believe me—I——

"May I have a few words with you alone?" she interrupted.

Mostyn glanced helplessly at his friend. Pierce awkwardly pulled out his
watch. "It's time I was off," he said hurriedly. "It will take me a few minutes
to get to the station, and really there's only just time. We shall meet on
Friday as arranged."

He took hasty leave of his friend and of Rada. "Jove, how her eyes
glistened!" he muttered to himself as he hurried away. "Can Mostyn really
have fallen in love with the girl? Why, she's—she's a regular little spit-fire;
what's more, she'll have the horse back, if I'm not mistaken." He gave one
of his characteristic whistles. "Poor Mostyn!" he added sympathetically.

CHAPTER XI.

MOSTYN MAKES REPARATION.

"Take the horse away!" commanded Rada, petulantly, as soon as Pierce

had disappeared. The stable-lad mounted upon Castor had been staring at
the little group, undecided if he was still wanted, or if the inspection of the
horse was concluded.

"Take him away!" she repeated, flashing angry eyes upon the boy. "I
can't bear to look at him now," she added under her breath.

The lad touched the reins and Castor trotted quickly away. Mostyn and
Rada were left in the comparative solitude of the great open space, though
every now and again the sound of shouting came to them from the distance,
and through the mist of the morning they could discern the shadowy forms
of men and horses.

Rada sank down upon a bench, clasping her little hands about her knees;
Mostyn stood by her side, waiting till she should have composed herself.
He anticipated a painful scene: his worst fears had been realised, and even
from the few words she had spoken, he understood what Rada must think of
him. Of course, he was really guiltless of offence; he had been deceived,
swindled, but even though Rada recognised this, she would still think that,
actuated by his desire to checkmate her, he had taken the opportunity of
gaining an unfair advantage.

He was sorry for Rada, and he was sorry for himself as well, for he saw
at once where lay his duty. He knew even now what he would have to do.
There must be no imputation of unfairness against him: he was bound, by
the force of circumstances, to a contest with the girl, but he would fight in
the open. She had issued the challenge with all the advantage on her side,
but he felt no animosity against her for this: she had spoken just as she, a
wayward, impulsive girl, might have been expected to speak. His only
trouble was that she should have grounds for thinking ill of him.

He no longer felt bashful and shy in her presence. So much, at least, was
in his favour. He seemed to know and understand her better for having seen
the squalor and wretchedness of her home, for having realised the
surroundings in which she lived. Then the Willis's had spoken so freely of
her, almost every day, encouraged, of course, by Mostyn; he had felt at last
that he had known the girl for years, and that her vagaries were no new
thing to him.

Perhaps he knew her better than she knew herself; so Mostyn, who had
had no experience of women, told himself in his conceit. It was all very
well for her to pretend to be hard and wayward and selfish: he knew better.
He knew what reason the villagers had for loving her; why, only yesterday
old Mrs. Oldham at the post office had told him how Rada had given up
days and days to nurse a little child who was ill with bronchitis, and who
might have died of it had it not been for Rada's care of her. "If I could make
her see herself and show herself to me in her true character," Mostyn
muttered, "then we might be—well, friends, as well as rivals. If I could!"

Unfortunately, as well as having no knowledge of women, Mostyn was

not possessed of much tact. And so, as usual, he blundered egregiously
when he attempted to put his ideas into practice.

"I think, Mr. Clithero," Rada began, "that you have taken a very mean
way of revenging yourself upon me. I thought you would have had more
manly feelings——"
 He knew what she meant, but he was in such a hurry to defend himself
that he failed to find the words he wanted.

"I was rude to you the other night," Rada went on relentlessly. "I was
rude to you at the Derby. I couldn't help myself. I always say just what
comes into my head."

Mostyn was quite aware of this, but he did not mean to say so; he
wanted to be very gentle with Rada, quite unconscious that gentleness was
the one thing which in her present temper she would resent. "I don't think
you meant to hurt," he said softly.

"I did," she retorted viciously. "You made such an idiot of yourself,
nobody could have helped being rude and laughing at you. And yet it's you
—a man who hasn't the smallest idea of racing, a man who'd buy a donkey
and enter it for the Derby if he acted upon his own intelligence—it's you
who, because you know I laid store by my horse, and because you've got
some insane idea in your head of besting me on the racecourse—it's you
who've played me this trick!" She spoke violently without the smallest
attempt to weigh her words. "You knew Castor was mine," she went on.
"You must have guessed it from what I said the other night. You knew, too,
that my father is not to be depended upon. And if you had not known all
that, Jack Treves told you the truth immediately after you had made the
purchase; there was plenty of time to repair the error, if you had not been
spiteful against me."

Mostyn flushed, stung by the injustice, but he was quite determined that
he would not lose his temper. "You misjudge me," he said, "you misjudge
me utterly. The whole thing has been a mistake, and if I have been to blame
in any way I am quite willing to repair the error." He had no wish to enter
into any long explanation, or to cast the blame where he knew it was
merited, upon Rada's father. He realised, and very probably correctly, that
this would only appear a further meanness in the girl's eyes. "The position is
very simple," he went on, "and there is no need for you to scold me, Miss
Armitage; please consider that Castor is yours."

It was Rada's turn to flush, for this was just what her father had hinted at,
what he had no doubt relied upon. To accept Castor as a gift at Mostyn's