XIX. RETURN TO ENGLAND 254 XX. YEARS OF EXILE 269 XXI. THE RECONCILIATION WITH WARWICK 278 XXII. BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT 285 XXIII. CHILDLESS, AND A WIDOW 292 XXIV. CONCLUSION 306 ENGRAVINGS. PAGE THE BRIDAL PROCESSION _Frontispiece._ GENERAL MAP 14 SELECTING THE ROSES 22 ORDEAL COMBAT 35 HENRY VI. IN HIS YOUTH 54 THE PENANCE 56 DISTRESS OF MARGARET'S MOTHER 65 SUFFOLK PRESENTING MARGARET TO THE KING 107 ANCIENT PORTRAIT OF QUEEN MARGARET 117 FEMALE COSTUME IN THE TIME OF HENRY VI 138 THE CHARGES AGAINST GLOUCESTER 160 ROUEN 176 VIEW OF BORDEAUX 180 THE TEMPLE GARDEN 192 THE LITTLE PRINCE AND HIS SWANS 220 MURDER OF RICHARD'S CHILD 235 LOUIS XI., MARGARET'S COUSIN 251 MAP OF THE BORDER 255 MARGARET AT THE CAVE 263 DEATH OF WARWICK 289 TEWKESBURY 297 THE MURDER OF PRINCE HENRY 302 VIEW OF CHERTSEY 308 [Illustration: Map, Illustrating the History of Margaret of Anjou.] MARGARET OF ANJOU. CHAPTER I. THE HOUSES OF YORK AND LANCASTER. [Sidenote: A real heroine.] Margaret of Anjou was a heroine; not a heroine of romance and fiction, but of stern and terrible reality. Her life was a series of military exploits, attended with dangers, privations, sufferings, and wonderful vicissitudes of fortune, scarcely to be paralleled in the whole history of mankind. [Sidenote: Two great quarrels.] She was born and lived in a period during which there prevailed in the western part of Europe two great and dreadful quarrels, which lasted for more than a hundred years, and which kept France and England, and all the countries contiguous to them, in a state of continual commotion during all that time.