Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/379

Rh who stood high on the bows of his own boat, had seized Monina. Now another larger skiff was seen approaching, "To your oars!" cried the Moor: they shot swiftly towards the Adalid, and while the sea became alive with craft, they reached the little caravel, who, turning her canvas to the wind, dropped down the tide.

the fourth day of her restraint, imprisonment it could hardly be called. Lady Katherine was brought up to Westminster; she was carried in a close litter, and no familiar face or accustomed attendant came near. Her anxiety, her anguish weighed intolerably upon her—sleep had not visited her eyes; she lived in perpetual terror that each sound was freighted with fatal tidings. It was in vain that even reason bade her nourish hope—a stronger power than reason dwelt in her heart, turning all its yearnings to despair.

As she approached the city, she thought each step must reveal the truth of what she was to suffer. Lo! the palace was entered—her habitual chamber—silence and solitude alone manifested that some change was even now in its effect; she had no tear? to spend upon her grief; her changing colour, her quickened respiration showed that every faculty was possessed by terror. Two hours, each minute stretched to a long, long century,—two hours passed, when a little scroll was delivered to her; it came from the queen, and contained these words, "My White Rose! the tempest has past—leaving, alas! devastation: we yet remain to each other—come"

These expressions spoke the worst to her fear-stricken mind—no subsequent agony might ever compare to the pang that made her very life-blood pause in her failing heart at that moment. Had the present and the future become void for him, to whom she was wedded heart and soul?—wedded in youth,