nd passed at once into the garden.

"Anne," said Isabel, when the two girls were alone, "thou hast vexed my
father, and what marvel? If the Lancastrians can be pitied, the Earl of
Warwick must be condemned!"

"Unkind!" said Anne, shedding tears; "I can pity woe and mischance,
without blaming those whose hard duty it might be to achieve them."

"In good sooth cannot I! Thou wouldst pity and pardon till thou leftst
no distinction between foeman and friend, leife and loathing. Be it
mine, like my great father, to love and to hate!"

"Yet why art thou so attached to the White Rose?" said Anne, stung, if
not to malice, at least to archness. "Thou knowest my father's nearest
wish was that his eldest daughter might be betrothed to King Edward.
Dost thou not pay good for evil when thou seest no excellence out of the
House of York?"

"Saucy Anne," answered Isabel, with a half smile, "I am not raught by
thy shafts, for I was a child for the nurses when King Edward sought a
wife for his love. But were I chafed--as I may be vain enough to know
myself--whom should I blame?--Not the king, but the Lancastrian who
witched him!"

She paused a moment, and, looking away, added in a low tone, "Didst
thou hear, sister Anne, if the Duke of Clarence visited my father the
forenoon?"

"Ah, Isabel, Isabel!"

"Ah, sister Anne, sister Anne! Wilt thou know all my secrets ere I know
them myself?"--and Isabel, with something of her father's playfulness,
put her hands to Anne's laughing lips.

Meanwhile Warwick, after walking musingly a few moments along the
garden, which was formed by plots of sward, bordered with fruit-trees,
and white rose-trees not yet in blossom, turned to his silent kinsman,
and said, "Forgive me, cousin mine, my mannerless burst against thy
brave father's faction; but when thou hast been a short while at court,
thou wilt see where the sore is. Certes, I love this king!" Here his
dark face lighted up. "Love him as a king,--ay, and as a son! And
who would not love him; brave as his sword, gallant, and winning, and
gracious as the noonday in summer? Besides, I placed him on his throne;
I honour myself in him!"

The earl's stature dilated as he spoke the last sentence, and his
hand rested on his dagger hilt. He resumed, with the same daring and
incautious candour that stamped his dauntless, soldier-like nature, "God
hath given me no son. Isabel of Warwick had been a mate for William the
Norman; and my grandson, if heir