name and services, that
Clarence's popular bearing and his birth of Plantagenet, would suffice
to summon the English people round our standard; that the false Edward
would be driven, on our landing, to fly the realm; and that, without
change to the dynasty of York, Clarence, as next male heir, would ascend
the throne. True, I saw all the obstacles, all the difficulties,--I was
warned of them before I left England; but still I hoped. Lord Oxford
has arrived, he has just left me. We have gone over the chart of the way
before us, weighed the worth of every name, for and against; and, alas!
I cannot but allow that all attempt to place the younger brother on
the throne of the elder would but lead to bootless slaughter and
irretrievable defeat."

"Wherefore think you so, my lord?" asked Isabel, in evident excitement.
"Your own retainers are sixty thousand,--an army larger than Edward, and
all his lords of yesterday, can bring into the field."

"My child," answered the earl, with that profound knowledge of his
countrymen which he had rather acquired from his English heart than from
any subtlety of intellect, "armies may gain a victory, but they do not
achieve a throne,--unless, at least, they enforce a slavery; and it
is not for me and for Clarence to be the violent conquerors of our
countrymen, but the regenerators of a free realm, corrupted by a false
man's rule."

"And what then," exclaimed Isabel,--"what do you propose, my father?
Can it be possible that you can unite yourself with the abhorred
Lancastrians, with the savage Anjouite, who beheaded my grandsire,
Salisbury? Well do I remember your own words,--'May God and Saint George
forget me, when I forget those gray and gory hairs!'"

Here Isabel was interrupted by a faint cry from Anne, who, unobserved
by the rest, and hitherto concealed from her father's eye by the deep
embrasure of the window, had risen some moments before, and listened,
with breathless attention, to the conversation between Warwick and the
duchess.

"It is not true, it is not true!" exclaimed Anne, passionately.
"Margaret disowns the inhuman deed."

"Thou art right, Anne," said Warwick; "though I guess not how thou didst
learn the error of a report so popularly believed that till of late I
never questioned its truth. King Louis assures me solemnly that that
foul act was done by the butcher Clifford, against Margaret's knowledge,
and, when known, to her grief and anger."

"And you, who call E