ace lasting between
us, I conquer myself, I yield to thy counsels. Once more the fugitive, I
abandon the city that contains Henry's unheeded prison. See, I am ready.
Who will know Margaret in this attire? Lead on!"

Rejoiced to seize advantage of this altered and submissive mood,
Robin instantly took the way through a narrow passage, to a small door
communicating with the river. There Hugh was waiting in a small boat,
moored to the damp and discoloured stairs.

Robin, by a gesture, checked the man's impulse to throw himself at the
feet of the pretended priest, and bade him put forth his best speed.
The princess seated herself by the helm, and the little boat cut
rapidly through the noble stream. Galleys, gay and gilded, with armorial
streamers, and filled with nobles and gallants, passed them, noisy with
mirth or music, on their way. These the fallen sovereign heeded not;
but, with all her faults, the woman's heart beating in her bosom--she
who in prosperity had so often wrought ruin, and shame, and woe to
her gentle lord; she who had been reckless of her trust as queen; and
incurred grave--but, let us charitably hope, unjust--suspicion of her
faith as wife, still fixed her eyes on the gloomy tower that contained
her captive husband, and felt that she could have forgotten a while even
the loss of power if but permitted to fall on that plighted heart, and
weep over the past with the woe-worn bridegroom of her youth.

CHAPTER II. IN WHICH ARE LAID OPEN TO THE READER THE CHARACTER OF
EDWARD THE FOURTH AND THAT OF HIS COURT, WITH THE MACHINATIONS OF THE
WOODVILLES AGAINST THE EARL OF WARWICK.

Scarcely need it be said to those who have looked with some philosophy
upon human life, that the young existence of Master Marmaduke Nevile,
once fairly merged in the great common sea, will rarely reappear before
us individualized and distinct. The type of the provincial cadet of the
day hastening courtwards to seek his fortune, he becomes lost amidst
the gigantic characters and fervid passions that alone stand forth in
history. And as, in reading biography, we first take interest in the
individual who narrates, but if his career shall pass into that broader
and more stirring life, in which he mingles with men who have left a
more dazzling memory than his own, we find the interest change from the
narrator to those by whom he is surrounded and eclipsed,--so, in this
record of a time, we scarce follow our young adventurer into