"Ah, Richard, even in those days thy ambition sometimes vexed my
woman's vanity, and showed me that I could never be all in all to so
large a heart!"

"Ambition! No, thou mistakest,--Montagu is ambitious, I but proud.
Montagu ever seeks to be higher than he is, I but assert the right to
be what I am and have been; and my pride, sweet wife, is a part of my
love for thee. It is thy title, Heiress of Warwick, and not my
father's, that I bear; thy badge, and not the Nevile's, which I have
made the symbol of my power. Shame, indeed, on my knighthood, if the
fairest dame in England could not justify my pride! Ah, belle amie,
why have we not a son?"

"Peradventure, fair lord," said the countess, with an arch yet half-
melancholy smile, "because that pride, or ambition, name it as thou
wilt, which thou excusest so gallantly, would become too insatiate and
limitless if thou sawest a male heir to thy greatness; and God,
perhaps, warns thee that, spread and increase as thou wilt,--yea,
until half our native country becometh as the manor of one man,--all
must pass from the Beauchamp and the Nevile into new Houses; thy glory
indeed an eternal heirloom, but only to thy land,--thy lordships and
thy wealth melting into the dowry of a daughter."

"At least no king hath daughters so dowried," answered Warwick; "and
though I disdain for myself the hard vassalage of a throne, yet if the
channel of our blood must pass into other streams, into nothing meaner
than the veins of royalty should it merge." He paused a moment, and
added with a sigh, "Would that Clarence were more worthy Isabel!"

"Nay," said the countess, gently, "he loveth her as she merits. He is