"’Tis strange gear," the Lady Idonia would sometimes say, "that men cannot think alike."
"Nay, fair Sister, why should they so?" was her brother William’s answer. "This were tame world if no man saw by his own eyes, but all after a pattern."
"That were well, Ida," replied the graver Maurice, "could all men see through God’s eyes."
"Aye, and who shall dare say how He looketh on these matters?" rejoined William.
"Know we not that?" said Maurice. "’The righteous Lord delighteth in righteousness; His countenance beholdeth equity.’"[#]
"On which side is the equity?" asked his brother with a shrug of his shoulders. "Somewhat scant on both, as methinks. My Lords of Warwick and Somerset are scarce they which, before giving battle, should look through a speculation glass[#] to find the righteousness of the matter."
"Perhaps it were hardly so small as to need the same," was Maurice’s dry answer.
"Nay, fair Uncle William, but I cry you mercy!" broke in Margery. "It seems me you be but half-hearted toward our good King. Surely his, and none other, is the cause of right and justice."
"Gramercy, Madge! I am well assured I never said they lay with that rebel," returned her uncle, laughing.
"Methinks," said Maurice quietly, "that King David was the wisest, which committed his cause unto God. Never, truly, had king so clear and perfect title as he. But we find not that he laid siege to King Saul, in order to come by it the sooner."
"Dear heart! prithee go tell that to the Queen," said William, still laughing. "Such reasoning were right after the King’s heart."
"The Queen fights not for herself," responded Maurice. "It is easier to trust our own lot in God’s hands, than the lot of them we love most. But mind ye not, Will and Ida, what our Philip were wont to say—’They that God keepeth be the best kept’?"
William made no reply. He was silenced by the allusion to the dead brother, on whom the Carews looked much as those around them did upon the saints.
The interval between the battles of St. Albans and Wakefield—five years and a half—had changed most of the _dramatis personæ_, but had not in any degree altered the sanguinary character of the struggle. Richard Duke of York was gone—killed at Wakefield: Suffolk was gone, a victim to popular fury. King Henry and Queen Marguerite were still the prominent figures on the Lancastrian side, joined now by their son Prince Edward. On the York side were the three sons of Duke Richard,—Edward, George, and Richard, whose ages when the story opens were twenty-eight, nineteen, and seventeen. Which of these three young men possessed the worst character it is difficult to judge, though that evil eminence is popularly assigned to Richard. Edward was an incorrigible libertine; not a bad organiser, nor devoid of personal bravery, though it usually appeared by fits and starts. He could do a generous action, but he was irremediably lazy, and far weaker in character than either of his brothers. One redeeming point he had—his personal love for his blood relations. But it was not pure love, for much selfishness was mixed with it. Perhaps really the worst of the three was George, for he was not merely an ingrained self-seeker, but also false to the heart’s core. No atom of trust could ever be placed in him. The most solemn oath taken to-day was no guarantee whatever against his breaking through every engagement to-morrow. The Dutchman’s maxim, "Every man for mineself," was the motto of George’s life. Each of the brothers spent his life in sowing seeds of misery, and in each case the grain came to perfection: though most of the harvest of George and Richard was reaped by themselves, while Edward’s was left for his innocent sons to gather.