Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/135

Rh, and only kept alive in his bosom at the expense of much suffering, How gladly he took refuge from these painful sensations in the gratitude and affection inspired by his noble aunt. Margaret had never seen him; the earl of Lincoln, Lady Brampton, Lovel, Plantagenet, and others were vouchers for his truth; still his first unsupported appearance in Ireland, and his long absence in Spain, engendered doubts, not in her mind, but in Maximilian and other nobles and counsellors around her. She replied to their arguments, but they remained unconvinced; at once, therefore, to justify her acknowledgment of him in their eyes, and to force them to the same credence as herself, she caused his first audience to be a solemn one, nor gave him a kinswoman's reception until he had proved his right to it.

He, who has heard some one falsely traduced and vilely calumniated, and, if not quite believing the detraction, yet impelled by it to some distaste of its object, and when that object appeared, radiant in innocence, attended by the dignity of truth and conscious worth, at once has yielded to the evidence of sense, will have some understanding of what passed in the mind of Margaret of Burgundy. None could resist the frank, blue, unclouded eye of the prince; that voice and manner, replete with simplicity and native honour. He replied to the duchess's questions briefly or otherwise, as appeared most pertinent, but in a way that vanquished the most sceptical person present. The warm-hearted duchess had hardly contained herself from the moment she beheld this youthful image of her dead brother. As the tones of a remembered melody awaken from sweet and bitter association unbidden tears, so did his voice, his gestures, the very waving of his glossy curls, strike the mute chords of many a forgotten memory. As soon as she saw belief and satisfaction in the countenances of those around her, she no longer restrained herself; with tears she embraced him; with a broken voice she presented her nephew to all around. Now to heap favours on him was her dear delight: she loved not the name of the duke of York, because, his pretensions admitted, he was something more; but he objected firmly to the empty title of king, and reiterated his determination to assume that only at Westminster. So she invented other names; the prince of England, and the "White Rose of England, were those he went by; she appointed him a guard of thirty halberdiers in addition to that formed by his English followers. Nor did she rest here; it was her ardent wish to place Lim on the throne of his father. The glad welcome she gave to the Yorkists, as, from far exile in distant lands, or obscure hiding in England, they repaired to her nephew's court, her discourse of succour, armies, plots quickly raised a spirit