Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/278

270 more to your generous, wounded heart, a need, which is even more mine than yours; but let smiles and love attend your kinsman to the end, unalloyed by a deeper regret, than that fate wills it, and we must separate."

believed that he held the strings, which commanded the movements of all the puppets about him. The intrigues of party, the habitual use of ill means to what those around him deemed a good end, had so accustomed him to lying and forgery, that his conscience was quite seared to the iniquity of these acts; truth to him was an accident, to be welcomed or not according as it was or was not advantageous to his plots.

King James prepared a fleet for the conveyance of the prince; and the earl of Huntley, as a matter of course, promised to entertain his daughter royally, until, in a palace in Westminster, she should find her destined title and fit abode. The Lady Katherine thanked him, but declared that she was nothing moved from her bridal vow, and that she never would desert Richard's side. All that her father urged was of no avail. State and dignity, or their contraries, humiliation and disgrace, could only touch her through her husband; he was her exalter or debaser, even as he rose or fell; it was too late now to repine at degradation, which it ill beseemed the daughter of a Gordon to encounter; it was incurred when she plighted her faith at the altar; wherever she was it must be hers. As a princess, she was lost or redeemed by her husband's fortunes. As a woman, her glory and all her honour must consist in never deviating