"Truly, who would not? for as you, then, noble lady, glided apart from
the other children, hand in hand with the young prince, in whom all
dreamed to see their future king, I heard the universal murmur of--a
false prophecy!"

"Ah! and of what?" asked Anne.

"That in the hand the prince clasped with his small rosy fingers--the
hand of great Warwick's daughter--lay the best defence of his father's
throne."

Anne's breast heaved, and her small foot began to mark strange
characters on the floor.

"So," she said musingly, "so even here, amidst a new court, you forget
not Prince Edward of Lancaster. Oh, we shall find hours to talk of
the past days. But how, if your childhood was spent in Margaret's
court, does your youth find a welcome in Elizabeth's?"

"Avarice and power had need of my father's science. He is a scholar
of good birth, but fallen fortunes, even now, and ever while night
lasts, he is at work. I belonged to the train of her grace of
Bedford; but when the duchess quitted the court, and the king retained
my father in his own royal service, her highness the queen was pleased
to receive me among her maidens. Happy that my father's home is
mine!--who else could tend him?"

"Thou art his only child?--he must--love thee dearly?"

"Yet not as I love him; he lives in a life apart from all else that