with horror, as from
those of thy wronged father's betrayer,--perchance his deathsman! Ill
omen broods on the cradle of the child for whom a mother's ambition
was but a daughter's perfidy. Woe to thee, wife and mother! Even my
forgiveness cannot avert thy doom!"

"Kill me! kill me!" exclaimed Isabel, springing towards him; but seeing
his face averted, his arms folded on his breast,--that noble breast,
never again her shelter,--she fell lifeless on the floor. [As our
narrative does not embrace the future fate of the Duchess of Clarence,
the reader will pardon us if we remind him that her first-born (who bore
his illustrious grandfather's title of Earl of Warwick) was cast into
prison on the accession of Henry VII., and afterwards beheaded by that
king. By birth, he was the rightful heir to the throne. The ill-fated
Isabel died young (five years after the date at which our tale has
arrived). One of her female attendants was tried and executed on the
charge of having poisoned her. Clarence lost no time in seeking to
supply her place. He solicited the hand of Mary of Burgundy, sole
daughter and heir of Charles the Bold. Edward's jealousy and fear
forbade him to listen to an alliance that might, as Lingard observes,
enable Clarence "to employ the power of Burgundy to win the crown of
England;" and hence arose those dissensions which ended in the secret
murder of the perjured duke.]

The earl looked round, to see that none were by to witness his weakness,
took her gently in his arms, laid her on her couch, and, bending over
her a moment, prayed to God to pardon her.

He then hastily left the room, ordered her handmaids and her litter, and
while she was yet unconscious, the gates of the town opened, and forth
through the arch went the closed and curtained vehicle which bore the
ill-fated duchess to the new home her husband had made with her father's
foe! The earl watched it from the casement of his tower, and said to
himself,--

"I had been unmanned, had I known her within the same walls. Now forever
I dismiss her memory and her crime. Treachery hath done its worst, and
my soul is proof against all storms!"

At night came messengers from Clarence and Edward, who had returned
to Warwick town, with offers of pardon to the earl, with promises of
favour, power, and grace. To Edward the earl deigned no answer; to the
messenger of Clarence he gave this: "Tell thy master I had liefer be
always like myself than like a false and