could ill conceal the emotions of
fear, of jealousy, of dismay, which these words excited.

"Lord Oxford!" he cried, stamping his foot. "Ha, John de Vere, pestilent
traitor, plottest thou thus? But we can yet seize thy person, and will
have thy head."

Alarmed at this burst, and suddenly made aware that he had laid his
breast too bare to the boy, whom he had thought to dazzle and seduce to
his designs, Montagu said falteringly, "But, my lord, our talk is but
in confidence: at your own prayer, with your own plighted word of prince
and of kinsman, that whatever my frankness may utter should not pass
farther. Take," added the nobleman, with proud dignity--"take my head
rather than Lord Oxford's; for I deserve death, if I reveal to one who
can betray the loose words of another's intimacy and trust!"

"Forgive me, my cousin," said Richard, meekly; "my love to Anne
transported me too far. Lord Oxford's words, as you report them, had
conjured up a rival, and--but enough of this. And now," added the
prince, gravely, and with a steadiness of voice and manner that gave a
certain majesty to his small stature, "now as thou hast spoken openly,
openly also will I reply. I feel the wrong to the Lady Anne as to
myself; deeply, burningly, and lastingly, will it live in my mind; it
may be, sooner or later, to rise to gloomy deeds, even against Edward
and Edward's blood. But no, I have the king's solemn protestations
of repentance; his guilty passion has burned into ashes, and he now
sighs--gay Edward--for a lighter fere. I cannot join with Clarence,
less can I join with the Lancastrians. My birth makes me the prop of the
throne of York,--to guard it as a heritage (who knows?) that may descend
to mine,--nay, to me! And, mark me well if Warwick attempt a war of
fratricide, he is lost; if, on the other hand, he can submit himself to
the hands of Margaret, stained with his father's gore, the success of an
hour will close in the humiliation of a life. There is a third way
left, and that way thou hast piously and wisely shown. Let him, like
me, resign revenge, and, not exacting a confession and a cry of peccavi,
which no king, much less King Edward the Plantagenet, can whimper forth,
let him accept such overtures as his liege can make. His titles and
castles shall be restored, equal possessions to those thou hast lost
assigned to thee, and all my guerdon (if I can so negotiate) as all my
ambition, his daughter's hand. Muse on this, and for