“Dear sister, be just to Clarence. He cannot openly defy his king and brother. Believe that he would have accompanied our uncle and cousin had he not deemed that their meditation would be more welcome, at least to King Edward, without his presence.”
“But not a letter! not a line!”
“Yet when I think of it, Isabel, are we sure that he even knew of the visit of the archbishop and his brother?”
“How could he fail to know?”
“The Duke of Gloucester last evening told me that the king had sent him southward.”
“Was it about Clarence that the duke whispered to thee so softly by the oriel window?”
“Surely, yes,” said Anne, simply. “Was not Richard as a brother to us when we played as children on yon greensward?”
“Never as a brother to me,—never was Richard of Gloucester one whom I could think of without fear and even loathing,” answered Isabel, quickly.
It was at this turn in the conversation that the noiseless step of Richard himself neared the spot, and hearing his own name thus discourteously treated, he paused, screened from their eyes by the bastion in the angle.
“Nay, nay, sister,” said Anne; “what is there in Richard that misbeseems his princely birth?”