Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/415

Rh her slightest acts, gave him an evening benison. Her voice, her look, her cordial manner moved to its depths a heart lately hardened against her. As she passed on, the man followed hastily, "Lady!" he cried.

It struck the princess that this poor fellow had some request to prefer to his master, and that he wished to do it through her medium; she turned with a benevolent smile: "Can I do aught for you, good friend?"

His voice failed him; he stretched out his hand, which held his book, she took it: the tiny volume was no stranger to her eyes; as if a ghost had looked on her lonely watching, she trembled and grew pale, when she opened it, and saw written in fair characters, by a hand now dust, "La Rosa Blanca." The rustic knelt before her.

"Lady, queen!" he cried, "Sole relic of the unforgotten! is it thus that we meet?"

"My cousin Edmund!"

"Hush! breathe not even to the silent woods the unknown word. Fancy not that I am Plantagenet: for all that was of worth in him you name, died when the White Rose scattered its leaves upon the unworthy earth."

"Ah! would that we had all died in that hour," cried Katherine: "why, when the ungrateful world lost him, did not all the good and true die also, so that they might no longer suffer!" Plantagenet cast a reproachful glance on her, as he said, "Happy indeed are those who die. O God! when I think of the many and the beloved, who, a few years ago, were alive around me, and among whose low silent graves I now walk alone, methinks I am dead; it is but the ghost of him you knew that lingers upon earth."

"Yes, they are all gone," said the princess; "all who linked me to the past, and were portions of my Richard's being. They are gone from before me. But are they truly no more, or do they live, like you, brooding over the lost, disdaining to communicate with one who lives but to remember them? Of the death of several I have heard; but often I have longed with bitterness to hear of you, and of the Spanish maiden, Monina de Faro."

"Her gentle soul," replied Edmund; "has flown to join him for whom she lived and died. It is now two years since I was assured of this. A friar, whom I had formerly well known, visited Lisbon; and I entreated him to inquire for De Faro and his child. The commander of the Adalid was almost forgotten; at last, an old sailor was found, who remembered that, some