st ever a part of such peculiar
manliness of character; "yes, sit we here under this spacious elm, and
think that our youth has come back to us once more. For verily, m'amie,
nothing in life has ever been so fair to me as those days when we
stood hand in hand on its threshold, and talked, boy-bridegroom and
child-bride as we were, of the morrow that lay beyond."

"Ah, Richard, even in those days thy ambition sometimes vexed my woman's
vanity, and showed me that I could never be all in all to so large a
heart!"

"Ambition! No, thou mistakest,--Montagu is ambitious, I but proud.
Montagu ever seeks to be higher than he is, I but assert the right to be
what I am and have been; and my pride, sweet wife, is a part of my love
for thee. It is thy title, Heiress of Warwick, and not my father's, that
I bear; thy badge, and not the Nevile's, which I have made the symbol
of my power. Shame, indeed, on my knighthood, if the fairest dame in
England could not justify my pride! Ah, belle amie, why have we not a
son?"

"Peradventure, fair lord," said the countess, with an arch yet
half-melancholy smile, "because that pride, or ambition, name it as thou
wilt, which thou excusest so gallantly, would become too insatiate and
limitless if thou sawest a male heir to thy greatness; and God, perhaps,
warns thee that, spread and increase as thou wilt,--yea, until half our
native country becometh as the manor of one man,--all must pass from the
Beauchamp and the Nevile into new Houses; thy glory indeed an eternal
heirloom, but only to thy land,--thy lordships and thy wealth melting
into the dowry of a daughter."

"At least no king hath daughters so dowried," answered Warwick; "and
though I disdain for myself the hard vassalage of a throne, yet if the
channel of our blood must pass into other streams, into nothing meaner
than the veins of royalty should it merge." He paused a moment, and
added with a sigh, "Would that Clarence were more worthy Isabel!"

"Nay," said the countess, gently, "he loveth her as she merits. He is
comely, brave, gracious, and learned."

"A pest upon that learning,--it sicklies and womanizes men's minds!"
exclaimed Warwick, bluntly. "Perhaps it is his learning that I am to
thank for George of Clarence's fears and doubts and calculations and
scruples. His brother forbids his marriage with any English donzell, for
Edward dares not specialize what alone he dreads. His letters burn with
love, and his actions freeze with