l's solemn reception of the
Queen.

'My Kate, my fairest! Mine eyes have been hungry for a sight of thee.'

And Catherine, in her horned head-gear and flutter of spangled veil, was
almost swallowed up in his hearty embrace; and the fervency of his great
love so far warmed her, that she clung to him, and tenderly said, 'My
lord, it is long since I saw you.'

'Thou wert before me! Ah! forgive thy tardy knight,' he continued,
gazing at her really enhanced beauty as if he had eyes for no one else,
even while with lip and hand, kiss, grasp, and word, he greeted her
companions, of whom Jaqueline of Hainault and John of Bedford were the
most prominent.

'And the babe! where is he?' then cried he. 'Let me have him to hold up
to my brave fellows in the court!'

'The Prince of Wales?' said Catherine. 'You never spake of my bringing
him.'

'If I spake not, it was because I doubted not for a moment that you would
keep him with you. Nay, verily it is not in sooth that you left him. You
are merely sporting with use.'

'Truly, Sir,' said Catherine, 'I never guessed that you would clog
yourself with a babe in the cradle, and I deemed him more safely nursed
at Windsor.'

'If it be for his safety! Yet a soldier's boy should thrive among
soldiers,' said the King, evidently much disappointed, and proceeding to
eager inquiries as to the appearance and progress of his child; to which
the Queen replied with a certain languor, as though she had no very
intimate personal knowledge of her little son.

Other eyes were meanwhile eagerly scanning the bright confusion of veils
and wimples; and Malcolm had just made out the tall head and dark locks
under a long almost shrouding white veil far away in the background
behind the Countess of Hainault, when the Duke of Bedford came up with a
frown of consternation on his always anxious face, and drawing King James
into a window, said, 'What have you been doing to him?'--to which James,
without hearing the question, replied, 'Where is _she_?'

'Joan? At home. It was the Queen's will. Of that another time. But
what means this?' and he signed towards his brother. 'Never saw I man so
changed.'

'Had you seen him at Christmas you might have said so,' replied James;
'but now I see naught amiss; I had been thinking I had never seen him so
fair and comely.'

'I tell you, James,' said Bedford, contracting his brows till they almost
met ever his arched nose, 'I tell you, his look brings