reverence, "Will you be pleased, my young lord, to conduct your
cousin, Master Marmaduke Nevile, to the earl's presence?" The young
gentleman eyed Marmaduke with a supercilious glance.

"Marry!" said he, pertly, "if a man born in the North were to feed all
his cousins, he would soon have a tail as long as my uncle, the stout
earl's. Come, sir cousin, this way." And without tarrying even to
give Nevile information of the name and quality of his new-found
relation,--who was no less than Lord Montagu's son, the sole male heir
to the honours of that mighty family, though now learning the
apprenticeship of chivalry amongst his uncle's pages,--the boy passed
before Marmaduke with a saunter, that, had they been in plain
Westmoreland, might have cost him a cuff from the stout hand of the
indignant elder cousin. He raised the tapestry at one end of the
room, and ascending a short flight of broad stairs, knocked gently on
the panels of an arched door sunk deep in the walls.

"Enter!" said a clear, loud voice, and the next moment Marmaduke was
in the presence of the King-maker.

He heard his guide pronounce his name, and saw him smile maliciously
at the momentary embarrassment the young man displayed, as the boy
passed by Marmaduke, and vanished. The Earl of Warwick was seated
near a door that opened upon an inner court, or rather garden, which
gave communication to the river. The chamber was painted in the style
of Henry III., with huge figures representing the battle of Hastings,
or rather, for there were many separate pieces, the conquest of Saxon
England. Over each head, to enlighten the ignorant, the artist had
taken the precaution to insert a label, which told the name and the
subject. The ceiling was groined, vaulted, and emblazoned with the