Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/363

Rh longer a part of their thoughts, their lives, themselves? Stood he alone in this miserable world, allied to it by hate only—the hate borne to him by his foe? Such gloomy misgivings were so alien to his nature, that they visited him as cruel iron torture visits soft human flesh. That she—the life of his life, should be false and cold! Each friend forgetful—Monina—Plantagenet—all—all! Oh, to stretch his quivering frame upon burning coals, had been to slumber on a bed of roses, in comparison with the agony these thoughts administered. His calmer moods, when he believed that, though tardy, they were true, were scarcely less painful. Then the real state of things grew more galling: the bluntness or silence of his keepers; their imperturbable or rude resistance to his questions; the certainty that if one answered graciously—that one he should see no more. Often he felt as if he could not endure his present position one hour longer. Fits of hope, meditations on escape, chequered his days; so that all was not so dark—but the transition from one emotion to another, each to end in blank despair, tasked his mercurial soul. Patience died within him—he might perish in the attempt, but he would be free.

Urged by Monina, by her own awakening fears, and above all by the keen burning desire of her heart, the Lady Katherine became very importunate with the crafty monarch to be permitted an interview with her lord. Henry was in no mood to grant her request: the thousand designs he had meditated to disgrace his victim, he had given up for her sake, because he would not refuse himself the pleasure of seeing her, and feared to behold aversion and horror mark an aspect hitherto all smiles towards him. The same fear, nurtured by the expressions of her tender affection, made him hesitate, ere he should endeavour to convince her that she had misallied herself to an impostor. Indeed, when at last he ventured to frame a speech bearing such a meaning, her answer told him, that if he could have changed the Royal York into base-born Perkin, the young and innocent wife would still cling to him to whom she had pledged her rows; to whom she had given himself; whose own, in Heaven's and her own eyes, she unalienably was. But now Henry, grown more callous as time elapsed, coined a new scheme, vile as his own soul: he resolved, by acting on her woman's fears, tenderness, and weakness, to make her the instrument of persuading her lord to some damning confession, that must stamp him as a deceiver for ever. This bright project animated him to fresh endeavours to please, and her with fresh hopes; yet he paused a little before he sought to execute it.

Winter crept on into spring, and spring ripened into summer,