Unless thy heart is with the marriage, the ties I would form are
threads and cobwebs."

"Nay," returned Edward, irresolutely: "in these great state matters
thy wit is elder than mine; but men do say the Count of Charolois is a
mighty lord; and the alliance with Burgundy will be more profitable to
staple and mart."

"Then, in God's name, so conclude it!" said the earl, hastily, but
with so dark a fire in his eyes that Edward, who was observing him,
changed countenance; "only ask me not, my liege, to advance such a
marriage. The Count of Charolois knows me as his foe--shame were mine
did I shun to say where I love, where I hate. That proud dullard once
slighted me when we met at his father's court, and the wish next to my
heart is to pay back my affront with my battle-axe. Give thy sister
to the heir of Burgundy, and forgive me if I depart to my castle of
Middleham."

Edward, stung by the sharpness of this reply, was about to answer as
became his majesty of king, when Warwick more deliberately resumed:
"Yet think well; Henry of Windsor is thy prisoner, but his cause lives
in Margaret and his son. There is but one power in Europe that can
threaten thee with aid to the Lancastrians; that power is France.
Make Louis thy friend and ally, and thou givest peace to thy life and
thy lineage; make Louis thy foe, and count on plots and stratagems and
treason, uneasy days and sleepless nights. Already thou hast lost one
occasion to secure that wiliest and most restless of princes, in
rejecting the hand of the Princess Bona. Happily, this loss now can
be retrieved. But alliance with Burgundy is war with France,--war
more deadly because Louis is a man who declares it not; a war carried