that I should have lived to mourn the day when Lord Warwick,
untrue to Salisbury and to York, joined his arms with Lancaster and
Margaret,--the day when Katherine could blush for the brother she had
deemed the glory of her House! No, no" (she continued, as Hastings
interrupted her with generous excuses for the earl, and allusion to the
known slights he had received),--"no, no; make not his cause the worse
by telling me that an unworthy pride, the grudge of some thwart to his
policy or power, has made him forget what was due to the memory of his
kinsman York, to the mangled corpse of his father Salisbury. Thinkest
thou that but for this I could--" She stopped, but Hastings divined her
thought, and guessed that, if spoken, it had run thus: "That I could,
even now, have received the homage of one who departs to meet, with
banner and clarion, my brother as his foe?"

The lovely sweetness of the late expression had gone from Katherine's
face, and its aspect showed that her high and ancestral spirit had
yielded but to one passion. She pursued,--

"While this strife lasts, it becomes my widowhood and kindred position
with the earl to retire to the convent my mother founded. To-morrow I
depart."

"Alas!" said Hastings, "thou speakest of the strife as if but a single
field. But Warwick returns not to these shores, nor bows himself to
league with Lancaster, for a chance hazardous and desperate, as Edward
too rashly deems it. It is in vain to deny that the earl is prepared for
a grave and lengthened war, and much I doubt whether Edward can resist
his power; for the idolatry of the very land will swell the ranks of so
dread a rebel. What if he succeed; what if we be driven into exile, as
Henry's friends before us; what if the king-maker be the king-dethroner?
Then, Katherine, then once more thou wilt be at the best of thy hostile
kindred, and once more, dowered as thou art, and thy womanhood still in
its richest bloom, thy hand will be lost to Hastings."

"Nay, if that be all thy fear, take with thee this pledge,--that
Warwick's treason to the House for which my father fell dissolves
his power over one driven to disown him as a brother,--knowing Earl
Salisbury, had he foreseen such disgrace, had disowned him as a son.
And if there be defeat and flight and exile, wherever thou wanderest,
Hastings, shall Katherine be found beside thee. Fare thee well, and Our
Lady shield thee! may thy lance be victorious against all foes,--save