“Can he injure the House of York?—Marry, yes,” he replied bluntly.
“But for what end? Whom else should he put upon the throne?”
“What if he forgive the Lancastrians? What if—”
“Utter not the thought, prince, breathe it not,” exclaimed the Lady Bonville, almost fiercely. “I love and honour my brave brother, despite—despite—” She paused a moment, blushed, and proceeded rapidly, without concluding the sentence. “I love him as a woman of his House must love the hero who forms its proudest boast. But if, for any personal grudge, any low ambition, any rash humour, the son of my father Salisbury could forget that Margaret of Anjou placed the gory head of that old man upon the gates of York, could by word or deed abet the cause of usurping and bloody Lancaster,—I would—I would—Out upon my sex! I could do nought but weep the glory of Nevile and Monthermer gone forever.”
Before Richard could reply, the sound of musical instruments, and a procession of heralds and pages proceeding from the palace, announced the approach of Edward. He caught the hand of the dame of Bonville, lifted it to his lips, and saying, “May fortune one day permit me to face as the earl’s son the earl’s foes,” made his graceful reverence, glided from the garden, gained his barge, and was rowed to the huge pile of Baynard’s Castle, lately reconstructed, but in a gloomy and barbaric taste, and in which, at that time, he principally resided with his mother, the once peerless Rose of Raby.
The Lady of Bonville paused a moment, and in that pause her countenance recovered its composure. She then passed on, with a stately step, towards a group of the ladies of the court, and her eye noted with proud pleasure that the highest names of the English knighthood and nobility, comprising the numerous connections of her family, formed a sullen circle apart from the rest, betokening, by their grave countenances and moody whispers, how sensitively they felt the slight to Lord Warwick’s embassy in the visit of the Count de la Roche, and how little they were disposed to cringe to the rising sun of the Woodvilles. There, collected into a puissance whose discontent hard sufficed to shake a firmer throne (the young Raoul de Fulke, the idolater of Warwick, the impersonation in himself of the old Norman seignorie, in their centre), with folded arms and lowering brows, stood the earl’s kinsmen, the Lords Fitzhugh and Fauconberg: with them, Thomas Lord Stanley, a prudent noble, who rarely sided with a malcontent, and the Lord St. John, and the heir of the ancient Bergavennies, and many another chief, under whose banner marched an army. Richard of Gloucester had shown his wit in refusing to mingle in intrigues which provoked the ire of that martial phalanx. As the Lady of Bonville swept by these gentlemen, their murmur of respectful homage, their profound salutation, and unbonneted heads, contrasted forcibly with the slight and grave, if not scornful, obeisance they had just rendered to one of the queen’s sisters, who had passed a moment before in the same direction. The lady still moved on, and came suddenly across the path of Hastings, as, in his robes of state, he issued from the palace. Their eyes met, and both changed colour.
“So, my lord chamberlain,” said the dame, sarcastically, “the Count de la Roche is, I hear, consigned to your especial charge.”
“A charge the chamberlain cannot refuse, and which William Hastings does not covet.”
“A king had never asked Montagu and Warwick to consider amongst their duties any charge they had deemed dishonouring.”
“Dishonouring, Lady Bonville!” exclaimed Hastings, with a bent brow and a flushed cheek,—“neither Montagu nor Warwick had, with safety, applied to me the word that has just passed your lips.”