What would any English duchess, ay, or the Queen of England herself, have thought, if the Archbishop of Canterbury had called her and her bridegroom anything but plain woman and man at such a time?

In a pageant the woman, full-veined and comely, her russet gown girded up like a harvester's might not inaptly have prefigured October; and for less comfortable November you could nowhere have found a symbol more precise than her lank companion, humorously peevish under his white thatch of hair, and constantly fretted by the sword tapping at his ankles.

"Oh no, messire, I reply to you with Arnaud de Marveil, that marvellous singer of eld, 'They may bear her from my presence, but they can never untie the knot which unites my heart to her; for that heart, so tender and so constant, God alone divides with my lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds but as a part of her domain, and as her vassal.'"

The sword dug deep into her shoulder, so that she shrieked once with the cold pain of this wound.

When he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, Sire Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation.

One cannot blame her," Meregrett considered, "since he wishes to marry her, and she, of course, wishes to make him happy."

But the little Princess wrung her hands.

"I can do no homage to Queen Ysabeau; yet the prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die to-morrow and cunningly contrives, for old time's sake, to hearten me with a sight of Rosamund, I cannot but kiss."

"It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble visibly, and my weakness is such that a child has more intelligence than I,and toward such misery any lady must in common reason be a little compassionate.

" So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell.

They narrate that next day the troops marched for Durham, where the Queen took up her quarters.

She considered her cause to be so clamantly just that to expatiate to the Holy Father upon its merits would be an impertinence; it was not conceivable that He would fail her; and in any event, she had in hand a deal of sewing which required immediate attention.

He told her the Marquess was dead, slain by the Knight of Liddesdale.

because you fancied the color of her eyes, Sire Edward, and admired the angle between her nose and her forehead.

Her husband granted her a bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but desiderated any appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a certain kinship to the impeccable loveliness of some female saint in a jaunty tapestry; bright as ice in sunshine, just so her beauty chilled you, he complained: moreover, this daughter of the Caesars had been fetched into England, chiefly, to breed him children, and this she had never done.

He found the Queen there, alone, as nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder at her bright and singular beauty.

She had screened her countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted fifty.

I am profoundly glad I killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it; but, after all, the man loved her in his fashion, and to the uttermost reach of his gross nature.

Perhaps he would thus worship her always, he reflected: and then again, perhaps he would be tired of her before long, just as all other persons seemed to abate in these infatuations: meanwhile it was certain that he was very happy.

She had Duke Jehan's adoration, and his barons' obeisancy, and his villagers applauded her passage with stentorian shouts.

It was as though she were some tinted and lavishly adorned statue of barbaric heathenry, and he her postulant; and her large eyes appeared to judge an immeasurable path, beyond him.

It is necessary for a gentleman to serve his lady according to her commandments, but you performed the most absurd and the most cruel task which any woman ever imposed upon her lover and servitor in domnei.

I will go into England and execute what mischief I may against her.

Katharine found her mother in foul-mouthed rage over the failure of a third attempt to poison the Dauphin of Vienne, as Queen Isabeau had previously poisoned her two elder sons; I might here trace out a curious similitude between the Valois and that dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew at Colchis, since the world was never at peace so long as any two of them existed.

" Katharine had gripped her by the shoulder.