Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/411

Rh They crossed the high-walled court, and passed through several dark galleries: it seemed as if they would never arrive; and yet both started when they stopped at the door of a cell.

"Does his grace expect us?" asked Katherine.

The turnkey looked as not understanding; but their guides who was the chaplain of the jail, answerdanswered [sic],—

"He does not. Fearful that some impediment might intervene, unwilling to disturb by a disappointed hope a soul so near its heavenly home, I have told him nothing."

"Gently then," said Katherine, "let our speech be low."

The door opened, and displayed the sou of the proud, luxurious Edward, sleeping on a wretched mattress, chained to the pavement. The ladies entered alone. Katherine glided noiselessly to his side; her first act was to bend down her cheek, till his breath disturbed the ringlet that rested on it; thus to assure herself that life was within his lips. Elizabeth fixed her earnest gaze on him, to discover if in aught he reminded her of the blue-eyed, flaxen-haired bridegroom of Anne Mowbray: he more resembled a picture of her father in his early manhood; and then again her aunt the duchess of Burgundy, whom she had seen just before king Edward's death. He lay there in placid sleep; thought and feeling absent: yet in that form resided the soul of Richard; a bright casket containing a priceless gem: no flaw—no token of weakness or decay. He lived—and at a word would come back from oblivion to her world of love. A few days and that form would still exist in all its fair proportion. But veil it quick; he is not there; unholy and false is the philosophy that teaches us that that lurid mockery was the thing we loved.

And now he woke, almost to joy; yet sadness succeeded quickly to rapture. "My poor girl," he said, "weep not for me; weep for thyself rather; a rose grafted on a thorn. The degraded and disgraced claims no such sorrow."

Katherine replied by an embrace; by laying her beautiful head on his bosom, and listening with forgetful, delicious ecstasy to the throbbings of his beating heart.

"Be not unjust to thyself," said a soft, unknown voice, breaking the silence of the lovers; "be not false to thy house. We are a devoted race, my brother; but we are proud even to the last."

"This is a new miracle," cried the prince. "Who, except this sainted one, will claim kindred with Tudor's enemy?"

"Tudor's wife; your sister. Do you not remember Elizabeth?"

As these words were said, Katherine, who appeardappeared [sic] to have accomplished her utmost wish, sat beside him, her arms around