wifedom. Yet I could
not hide from me that thou wert happy at that great moment, when he
swore to love and cherish thee, till death you parted.

"Ah, George, my prince, my king, how wickedly thou didst break thy vows
with both of us who loved thee well, through good and ill report--for
they spake evil of thee, George; ay, the meanest of thy subjects spake
lightly of their king--when with that sweet soul secretly hid away in
the farthest corner of thy kingdom, thou soughtst divorce from thy later
Caroline, whom thou, unfaithful, didst charge with infidelity. When, at
last, thou didst turn again to the partner of thy youth, thy true wife
in the eyes of God, it was too late. Thou didst promise me that thou
wouldst never take another wife, never put our dear heart away, though
she could not--after our miserable laws--bear thee princes. Thou didst
break thy promise, yet she forgave thee, and I forgave thee, for well we
knew that thou wouldst pay a heavy reckoning, and that in the hour when
thou shouldst cry to us we might not come to thee; that in the days when
age and sorrow and vast troubles should oppress thee, thou wouldst long
for the true hearts who loved thee for thyself and not for aught thou
wudst give, or aught that thou wert, save as a man.

"'When thou didst proclaim thy purpose to take Caroline to wife, I
pleaded with thee, I was wroth with thee. Thy one plea was succession.
Succession! Succession! What were a hundred dynasties beside that
precious life, eaten by shame and sorrow? It were easy for others, not
thy children, to come after thee, to rule as well as thee, as must even
now be the case, for thou hast no lawful child save that one in the
loneliest corner of thy English vineyard--alack! alack! I warned thee
George, I pleaded, and thou didst drive me out with words ill-suited to
thy friend who loved thee.

"'I did not fear thee, I would have forced thee to thy knees or made
thee fight me, had not some good spirit cried to my heart that thou wert
her husband, and that we both had loved thee. I dared not listen to
the brutal thing thou hintedst at--that now I might fatten where I had
hungered. Thou hadst to answer for the baseness of that thought to the
King of kings, when thou wentest forth alone, no subject, courtier,
friend, wife, or child to do thee service, journeying--not en prince,
George; no, not en prince! but as a naked soul to God.

"'Thou saidst to me: "Get thee gone, John York, where I shall