of fame,--to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!"

Rapt in this gloomy self-commune, he heard not the light step that
sought his side, till a tender arm was thrown around him, and a face
in which sweet temper and pure thought had preserved to matronly
beauty all the bloom of youth, looked up smilingly to his own.

"My lord, my Richard," said the countess, "why didst thou steal so
churlishly from me? Hath there, alas! come a time when thou deemest
me unworthy to share thy thoughts, or soothe thy troubles?"

"Fond one! no," said Warwick, drawing the form still light, though
rounded, nearer to his bosom. "For nineteen years hast thou been to
me a leal and loving wife. Thou wert a child on our wedding-day,
m'amie, and I but a beardless youth; yet wise enough was I then to
see, at the first glance of thy blue eye, that there was more treasure
in thy heart than in all the lordships thy hand bestowed."

"My Richard!" murmured the countess, and her tears of grateful delight
fell on the hand she kissed.

"Yes, let us recall those early and sweet days," continued Warwick,
with a tenderness of voice and manner that strangers might have
marvelled at, forgetting how tenderness is almost ever a part of such
peculiar manliness of character; "yes, sit we here under this spacious
elm, and think that our youth has come back to us once more. For
verily, m'amie, nothing in life has ever been so fair to me as those
days when we stood hand in hand on its threshold, and talked, boy-
bridegroom and child-bride as we were, of the morrow that lay beyond."