‘Thou wert before me!  Ah! forgive thy tardy knight,’ he continued, gazing at her really enhanced beauty as if he had eyes for no one else, even while with lip and hand, kiss, grasp, and word, he greeted her companions, of whom Jaqueline of Hainault and John of Bedford were the most prominent.

‘And the babe! where is he?’ then cried he.  ’Let me have him to hold up to my brave fellows in the court!’

‘The Prince of Wales?’ said Catherine.  ’You never spake of my bringing him.’

’If I spake not, it was because I doubted not for a moment that you would keep him with you.  Nay, verily it is not in sooth that you left him.  You are merely sporting with use.’

‘Truly, Sir,’ said Catherine, ’I never guessed that you would clog yourself with a babe in the cradle, and I deemed him more safely nursed at Windsor.’

’If it be for his safety!  Yet a soldier’s boy should thrive among soldiers,’ said the King, evidently much disappointed, and proceeding to eager inquiries as to the appearance and progress of his child; to which the Queen replied with a certain languor, as though she had no very intimate personal knowledge of her little son.

Other eyes were meanwhile eagerly scanning the bright confusion of veils and wimples; and Malcolm had just made out the tall head and dark locks under a long almost shrouding white veil far away in the background behind the Countess of Hainault, when the Duke of Bedford came up with a frown of consternation on his always anxious face, and drawing King James into a window, said, ’What have you been doing to him?’—­to which James, without hearing the question, replied, ‘Where is she?’

’Joan?  At home.  It was the Queen’s will.  Of that another time.  But what means this?’ and he signed towards his brother.  ’Never saw I man so changed.’

‘Had you seen him at Christmas you might have said so,’ replied James; ’but now I see naught amiss; I had been thinking I had never seen him so fair and comely.’

‘I tell you, James,’ said Bedford, contracting his brows till they almost met ever his arched nose, ’I tell you, his look brings back to me my mother’s, the last time she greeted my father!’

’To your fantasy, not your memory, John!  You were a mere babe at her death.’

‘Of five years,’ said Bedford.  ’That face—­that cough—­have brought all back—­ay, the yearning look when my father was absent, and the pure rosy fairness that Harry and Tom cited so fiercely against one who would have told them how sick to death she was.  I mind me too, that when our grandame of Hereford made us motherless children over to our grandsire of Lancaster, it was with a warning that Harry had the tender lungs of the Bohuns, and needed care.  One deadly sickness he had at Kenilworth, when my father was ridden for post-haste.  My mind misgave me throughout this weary siege; but his service held me fast at home, and I trusted that you would watch over him.’