the pompous retinue allotted to her, found herself alone with the
young maiden whom she had elected to her special service.

"And you remember me, too, fair Sibyll?" said Anne, with her dulcet and
endearing voice.

"Truly, who would not? for as you, then, noble lady, glided apart from
the other children, hand in hand with the young prince, in whom all
dreamed to see their future king, I heard the universal murmur of--a
false prophecy!"

"Ah! and of what?" asked Anne.

"That in the hand the prince clasped with his small rosy fingers--the
hand of great Warwick's daughter--lay the best defence of his father's
throne."

Anne's breast heaved, and her small foot began to mark strange
characters on the floor.

"So," she said musingly, "so even here, amidst a new court, you forget
not Prince Edward of Lancaster. Oh, we shall find hours to talk of the
past days. But how, if your childhood was spent in Margaret's court,
does your youth find a welcome in Elizabeth's?"

"Avarice and power had need of my father's science. He is a scholar of
good birth, but fallen fortunes, even now, and ever while night lasts,
he is at work. I belonged to the train of her grace of Bedford; but when
the duchess quitted the court, and the king retained my father in his
own royal service, her highness the queen was pleased to receive me
among her maidens. Happy that my father's home is mine!--who else could
tend him?"

"Thou art his only child?--he must--love thee dearly?"

"Yet not as I love him; he lives in a life apart from all else that
live. But after all, peradventure it is sweeter to love than to be
loved."

Anne, whose nature was singularly tender and woman-like, was greatly
affected by this answer. She drew nearer to Sibyll; she twined her arm
round her slight form, and kissed her forehead.

"Shall I love thee, Sibyll?" she said, with a girl's candid simplicity,
"and wilt thou love me?"

"Ah, lady! there are so many to love thee,--father, mother, sister,--all
the world; the very sun shines more kindly upon the great!"

"Nay!" said Anne, with that jealousy of a claim to suffering to which
the gentler natures are prone, "I may have sorrows from which thou
art free. I confess to thee, Sibyll, that something I know not how to
explain draws me strangely towards thy sweet face. Marriage has lost me
my only sister, for since Isabel is wed she is changed to me--would that
her place were supplied by thee! Shall I steal thee from the q