r, aquiline, haughty features, spare but powerful
frame, and inexpressible air of authority and command, were found all
the attributes of the purest and eldest Norman race,--the Patricians of
the World.

"Dear Raoul de Fulke," returned Montagu, coldly, "when thou hast reached
my age of thirty and four, thou wilt learn that no man's fortune casts
so broad a shadow as to shelter from the storm the victims of a fallen
cause."

"Not so would say thy bold brother," answered Raoul de Fulke, with a
slight curl of his proud lip. "And I hold, with him, that no king is so
sacred that we should render to his resentments our own kith and kin.
God's wot, whosoever wears the badge and springs from the stem of Raoul
de Fulke shall never find me question over much whether his father
fought for York or Lancaster."

"Hush, rash babbler!" said Montagu, laughing gently; "what would King
Edward say if this speech reached his ears? Our friend," added the
courtier, turning to the rest, "in vain would bar the tide of change;
and in this our New England, begirt with new men and new fashions,
affect the feudal baronage of the worn-out Norman. But thou art a
gallant knight, De Fulke, though a poor courtier."

"The saints keep me so!" returned De Fulke. "From overgluttony, from
over wine-bibbing, from cringing to a king's leman, from quaking at a
king's frown, from unbonneting to a greasy mob, from marrying an old
crone for vile gold, may the saints ever keep Raoul de Fulke and his
sons! Amen!" This speech, in which every sentence struck its stinging
satire into one or other of the listeners, was succeeded by an awkward
silence, which Montagu was the first to break.

"Pardieu!" he said, "when did Lord Hastings leave us, and what fair face
can have lured the truant?"

"He left us suddenly on the archery-ground," answered the young Lovell.
"But as well might we track the breeze to the rose as Lord William's
sigh to maid or matron."

While thus conversed the cavaliers, and their plumes waved, and their
mantles glittered along the broken ground, Marmaduke Nevile's eye
pursued the horsemen with all that bitter feeling of wounded pride
and impotent resentment with which Youth regards the first insult it
receives from Power.

CHAPTER II. THE BROKEN GITTERN.

Rousing himself from his indignant revery, Marmaduke Nevile followed one
of the smaller streams into which the crowd divided itself on dispersing
from the archery-ground, and soon f