iage.] and requires state, as she
bestows pomp. Look round, and tell me what man ever maintained himself
in power without the strong connections, the convenient dower, the
acute, unseen, unsleeping woman-influence of some noble wife? How can a
poor man defend his repute, his popular name, that airy but all puissant
thing we call dignity or station, against the pricks and stings of
female intrigue and female gossip? But he marries, and, lo, a host of
fairy champions, who pinch the rival lozels unawares: his wife hath
her army of courtpie and jupon, to array against the dames of his foes!
Wherefore, my friend, while thou art unwedded, think not to cope with
Lord Rivers, who hath a wife with three sisters, two aunts, and a score
of she-cousins!"

"And if," replied Hastings, more and more unquiet under the duke's
truthful irony,--"if I were now to come to ask the king permission to
wed--"

"If thou wert, and the bride-elect were a lady with power and wealth and
manifold connections, and the practice of a court, thou wouldst be the
mightiest lord in the kingdom since Warwick's exile."

"And if she had but youth, beauty, and virtue?"

"Oh, then, my Lord Hastings, pray thy patron saint for a war,--for in
peace thou wouldst be lost amongst the crowd. But truce to these jests;
for thou art not the man to prate of youth, virtue, and such like, in
sober earnest, amidst this work-day world, where nothing is young and
nothing virtuous;--and listen to grave matters."

The duke then communicated to Hastings the last tidings received of the
machinations of Warwick. He was in high spirits; for those last tidings
but reported Margaret's refusal to entertain the proposition of a
nuptial alliance with the earl, though, on the other hand, the Duke of
Burgundy, who was in constant correspondence with his spies, wrote word
that Warwick was collecting provisions, from his own means, for more
than sixty thousand men; and that, with Lancaster or without, the earl
was prepared to match his own family interest against the armies of
Edward.

"And," said Hastings, "if all his family joined with him, what foreign
king could be so formidable an invader? Maltravers and the Mowbrays,
Fauconberg, Westmoreland, Fitzhugh, Stanley, Bonville, Worcester--"

"But happily," said Gloucester, "the Mowbrays have been allied also to
the queen's sister; Worcester detests Warwick; Stanley always murmurs
against us, a sure sign that he will fight for us; and B