What could this mean? Glad, confused, yet still fearful, the prince was almost deprived of the power of motion. Recovering himself with a strong effort, he passed on to the inner chamber: it was a bedroom, tapestried, strewed thick with rushes, a silver lamp suspended by a silver chain to the grim claws of a gilt eagle, which was fixed in the ceiling, gave token of rank, as well as the rich damask of the bed-furniture and the curious carving of the couch and seats; the articles of dress also strewed about belonged to the noble-born: strange, as yet Richard had not conjectured for whom he had been mistaken! He drew near the bed, and gazed fixedly on its occupier. The short, clustering, auburn curls were tinged with grey, yet the sleeper was young, though made untimely old by suffering; his cheeks were wasted and fallen in; the blue veins on his brow were conspicuous, lifting the clear skin which clung almost to the bones; he was as pale as marble, and the heavy eyelids were partly raised even in sleep by the large blue ball that showed itself beneath; one hand lay on the coverlid, thin to emaciation. What manner of victim was this to Henry's tyranny? nay, the enigma was easily solved: it must be the earl of Warwick. "And such, but for my cousin Lincoln, would have been my fate," thought Richard. He remembered his childhood's imprisonment; he thought of the long days and nights of confinement, the utter hopelessness, the freezing despair, blighting the budding hopes of youth, the throes of intolerable, struggling agony, which had reduced poor Warwick to this shadow of humanity; he felt a choking sensation in his throat as he bent over him; large drops gathered in his eyes; they fell, ere he was aware, on the sleeper's wan check.
Warwick turned uneasily, opened his eyes, and half-started up: "Whom have we here?" he cried: "why am I disturbed?"
"Your pardon, fair gentleman," Richard began——
"My pardon!" repeated Warwick, bitterly; "were that needed, you were not here. What means this intrusion—tell me, and be gone?"
"I am not what you take me for, cousin Edward," said the prince.
Now, indeed, did Warwick start; shading his eyes from the lamp, he gazed earnestly on the speaker, murmuring, "That voice, that name—it cannot be! In the name of sweet charity speak again; tell me what this means, and if you are—why this visit, why that garb?"
"My dear lord of Warwick," said the prince, "dismiss this inquietude, and if you will listen with patience to the story of an unhappy kinsman, you shall know all. I am Richard of York; those whose blood is akin to yours as well as mine, have ycleped me the White Rose of England."
The earl of Warwick had heard of the Pretender set up by his aunt, the duchess of Burgundy; he had often pondered over the likelihood of his really being his cousin, and the alteration it would occasion in his fortunes, if he were to succeed. Shut out from the world, as he had been so long, the victim of mere despair, he could not even imagine that good could betide to any one, save to the oppressor of his race; to see Perkin, for so he had been taught to call him, within the walls of the ill-fated Tower, appeared to disclose at once his defeat. Even when the duke rapidly and briefly narrated the accidents that had brought him thither, and his strange position. Prince Edward believed only that he had been decoyed into the trap, which had closed on him for ever.
Still Richard talked on; his ardour, his confidence in his own measures, his vivacious anxiety already to put them into practice, his utter fearlessness, were not lost upon one who had been dead to outward impressions, not from want of sensibility, but from the annihilation of hope. Some of his cousin's spirit overflowed into Warwick's heart; and, in conclusion, he assented to all he said, promising to do whatever was required of him, though after ten years of lone imprisonment he almost shrunk from emerging from his listless state.