"Saints forefend!" exclaimed Isabel; "can you so wrong my honest
meaning? O George! can you conceive that your wife--Warwick's
daughter--harbours the thought of murder? No! surely the career
before you seems plain and spotless! Can Edward reign? Deserted by
the barons, and wearing away even my father's long-credulous love;
odious! except in luxurious and unwarlike London, to all the commons--
how reign? What other choice left? none,--save Henry of Lancaster or
George of York."

"Were it so!" said the weak duke; and yet be added falteringly,
"believe me, Warwick meditates no such changes in my favour."

"Time is a rapid ripener," answered Isabel; "but hark! they are
lowering the drawbridge for our guests."




CHAPTER VIII.

THE ANCIENTS RIGHTLY GAVE TO THE GODDESS OF ELOQUENCE A CROWN.

The lady of Warwick stood at the threshold of the porch, which, in the
inner side of the broad quadrangle, admitted to the apartments used by
the family; and, heading the mighty train that, line after line,
emerged through the grim jaws of the arch, came the earl on his black
destrier, and the young king.

Even where she stood, the anxious chatelaine beheld the moody and