d of Charlemagne or Rollo. The sports that had pleased the leisure of
his earlier youth were tedious and flat to one snatched from so mighty
a career. His hound lay idle at his feet, his falcon took holiday on the
perch, his jester was banished to the page's table. Behold the repose of
this great unlettered spirit! But while his mind was thus debarred from
its native sphere, all tended to pamper Lord Warwick's infirmity of
pride. The ungrateful Edward might forget him; but the king seemed to
stand alone in that oblivion. The mightiest peers, the most renowned
knights, gathered to his hall. Middleham,--not Windsor nor Shene nor
Westminster nor the Tower--seemed the COURT OF ENGLAND. As the Last
of the Barons paced his terrace, far as his eye could reach, his broad
domains extended, studded with villages and towns and castles swarming
with his retainers. The whole country seemed in mourning for his
absence. The name of Warwick was in all men's mouths, and not a group
gathered in market-place or hostel but what the minstrel who had some
ballad in praise of the stout earl had a rapt and thrilling audience.

"And is the river of my life," muttered Warwick, "shrunk into this
stagnant pool? Happy the man who hath never known what it is to taste of
fame,--to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!"

Rapt in this gloomy self-commune, he heard not the light step that
sought his side, till a tender arm was thrown around him, and a face in
which sweet temper and pure thought had preserved to matronly beauty all
the bloom of youth, looked up smilingly to his own.

"My lord, my Richard," said the countess, "why didst thou steal so
churlishly from me? Hath there, alas! come a time when thou deemest me
unworthy to share thy thoughts, or soothe thy troubles?"

"Fond one! no," said Warwick, drawing the form still light, though
rounded, nearer to his bosom. "For nineteen years hast thou been to me a
leal and loving wife. Thou wert a child on our wedding-day, m'amie, and
I but a beardless youth; yet wise enough was I then to see, at the first
glance of thy blue eye, that there was more treasure in thy heart than
in all the lordships thy hand bestowed."

"My Richard!" murmured the countess, and her tears of grateful delight
fell on the hand she kissed.

"Yes, let us recall those early and sweet days," continued Warwick, with
a tenderness of voice and manner that strangers might have marvelled
at, forgetting how tenderness is almo