r in his movements than when Eustace had last seen him; and at
his side sat his wife,--her features still retaining the majestic
beauty of Joan Plantagenet, the Fair Maid of Kent--but worn and faded
with anxiety. She watched her princely Lord with an eye full of care,
and could scarcely spare attention for the lovely child who clung to
her side, and whose brilliantly fair complexion, wavy flaxen hair, high
brow, and perfectly formed though infantine features, already promised
that remarkable beauty which distinguished the countenance of Richard
II. On the other side of the Prince sat his sister-in-law, the
Countess of Cambridge, a Spanish Infanta; and her husband, Edmund,
afterwards Duke of York, was beside the Princess of Wales. But more
wonderful than all, among them stood the Constable of France. The two
boys, Prince Edward and his cousin Henry of Lancaster, were stationed
as pages on each side of the Princess, but as their play-fellow,
Arthur, advanced with his uncle, they both sprang down the steps of the
gallery to meet him, and each took a hand. Edward, however, first
bethinking himself of the respect which, Prince as he was, he owed to a
belted Knight, made his reverence to Sir Eustace, who, at a sign from
the Prince of Wales, mounted the steps and bent his knee to the ground
before him.

"Nay, Sir Eustace," said the Prince, bending forward, "it is rather I
who should kneel to you for pardon; I have used you ill, Eustace, and,
I fear me, transgressed the pledge which I gave to your brother on the
plain of Navaretta."

"Oh, say not so, my gracious liege," said Eustace, as tears gathered in
his eyes,--"it was but that your noble ear was deceived by the slanders
of my foes!"

"True, Sir Eustace--yet, once, Edward of England would not have heard a
slanderous tale against one of his well-proved Knights without sifting
it well. But I am not as once I was--sickness hath unnerved me, and, I
fear me, hath often led me to permit what may have dimmed my fame. Who
would have dared to tell me that I should suffer my castles to be made
into traps for my faithful Knights? And now, Sir Eustace, that I am
about to repair my injustice towards you, let me feel, as a man whose
account for this world must ere long be closed, that I have your
forgiveness."

The Prince took the hand of the young Knight, who struggled hard with
his emotion. "And here is another friend," he added--"a firmer friend,
though foe, than you hav