While they yet spoke, they had both reached the side of Anne. Sibyll still persisted in the wish to accompany her friend; but Marmaduke's representation of the peril to life itself that might befall her father, if Edward learned she had abetted Anne's escape, finally prevailed. The knight and his charge gained the outer gate.
"Haste, haste, Master Warder!" he cried, beating at the door with his dagger till it opened jealously,—"messages of importance to the Lord Warwick. We have the king's signet. Open!"
The sleepy warder glanced at the ring; the gates were opened; they were without the fortress, they hurried on. "Cheer up, noble lady; you are safe, you shall be avenged!" said Marmaduke, as he felt the steps of his companion falter. But the reaction had come. The effort Anne had hitherto made was for escape, for liberty; the strength ceased, the object gained; her head drooped, she muttered a few incoherent words, and then sense and life left her. Marmaduke paused in great perplexity and alarm. But lo, a light in a house before him! That house the third to the river,—the only one with the arched porch described by Sibyll. He lifted the light and holy burden in his strong arms, he gained the door; to his astonishment it was open; a light burned on the stairs; he heard, in the upper room, the sound of whispered voices, and quick, soft footsteps hurrying to and fro. Still bearing the insensible form of his companion, he ascended the staircase, and entered at once upon a chamber, in which, by a dim lamp, he saw some two or three persons assembled round a bed in the recess. A grave man advanced to him, as he paused at the threshold.
"Whom seek you?"
"The Lady Longueville."
"Hush?"
"Who needs me?" said a faint voice, from the curtained recess.
"My name is Nevile," answered Marmaduke, with straightforward brevity.
"Mistress Sibyll Warner told me of this house, where I come for an
hour's shelter to my companion, the Lady Anne, daughter of the Earl of
Warwick."
Marmaduke resigned his charge to an old woman, who was the nurse in that sick-chamber, and who lifted the hood and chafed the pale, cold hands of the young maiden; the knight then strode to the recess. The Lady of Longueville was on the bed of death—an illness of two days had brought her to the brink of the grave; but there was in her eye and countenance a restless and preternatural animation, and her voice was clear and shrill, as she said,—
"Why does the daughter of Warwick, the Yorkist, seek refuge in the house of the fallen and childless Lancastrian?"