They were not kept long in suspense. The great doors at the bottom of the hall were flung wide open. A trumpet note rang through the building, till the rafters themselves echoed to it; and it was answered by the shout from hundreds of voices as the company saw whose was the stately figure that the Earl had gone forward to meet.
The Demoiselle suddenly clapped her hands, and waved her scarf in token of joyous greeting.
"It is my noble cousin, my well-loved cousin!" she cried, in tones of childish rapture; "it is Prince Edward himself!"
CHAPTER XV.
PRINCE EDWARD.
The Demoiselle was right. The tall and kingly-looking youth now striding up the great hall of Kenilworth, greeting first his uncle the Earl and then the Countess his aunt, was none other than the King's eldest son—that Prince Edward who was to play so great a part in the history of the English nation.
At that time he was a youth of some two-and-twenty summers, and had long been held to have arrived at man's estate. He was becoming a power in the kingdom, and was developing an aptitude for government which sometimes delighted and sometimes alarmed his father. He was no favourite with his father's foreign flatterers, and was an ally of those who upheld the gradually moulding constitution and the liberties of the people. He had subscribed willingly to the Provisions of Oxford, and had remonstrated hotly with his father when the latter resolved to ignore his oath, and later on to obtain absolution from it.
Prince Edward at that time had practically embraced the cause of the Barons, although taking no public action against his father. Henry, in dismay, had sent him to Gascony; but the move had not been a happy one, for it had thrown him into the society of the young De Montforts, his cousins, who were also there, and had increased his intimacy with that dread man their father. His appearance at Kenilworth at this juncture was startling to all, for he was believed by the Earl and his family to be still in Gascony, and they had not the smallest premonition of this visit.
But the Prince had been at Kenilworth before, and was fond of the fine old place and of the life led by its inhabitants. It was nothing very wonderful for him to come hither, though the manner of his arrival to-day was somewhat startling.