re small, and apparently
made for the sole purpose of driving mankind distracted. In fact, that
seemed to be the paramount object in her creation, for she had the
world of men at her feet. Her greatest beauty was her glowing dark
brown eyes, which shone with an ever-changing luster from beneath the
shade of the longest, blackest upcurving lashes ever seen.

Her voice was soft and full, and, except when angry, which, alas, was
not infrequent, had a low and coaxing little note that made it
irresistible; she was a most adroit coaxer, and knew her power full
well, although she did not always plead, having the Tudor temper and
preferring to command--when she could. As before hinted, she had
coaxed her royal brother out of several proposed marriages for her,
which would have been greatly to his advantage; and if you had only
known Henry Tudor, with his vain, boisterous, stubborn violence, you
could form some idea of Mary's powers by that achievement alone.

Will Sommers, the fool, one day spread through court an announcement
that there would be a public exhibition in the main hall of the palace
that evening, when the Princess Mary would perform the somewhat
alarming, but, in fact, harmless, operation of wheedling the king out
of his ears. This was just after she had coaxed him to annul a
marriage contract which her father had made for her with Charles of
Germany, then heir to the greatest inheritance that ever fell to the
lot of one man--Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, and heaven only knows
what else.

She had been made love to by so many men, who had lost their senses in
the dazzling rays of her thousand perfections--of whom, I am ashamed
to say, that I, for a time, had been insane enough to be one--that
love had grown to be a sort of joke with her, and man, a poor,
contemptible creature, made to grovel at her feet. Not that she liked
or encouraged it; for, never having been moved herself, she held love
and its sufferings in utter scorn. Man's love was so cheap and
plentiful that it had no value in her eyes, and it looked as if she
would lose the best thing in life by having too much of it.

Such was the royal maid to whose tender mercies, I now tell you
frankly, my friend Brandon was soon to be turned over. He, however,
was a blade of very different temper from any she had known; and when
I first saw signs of a growing intimacy between them I felt, from what
little I had seen of Brandon, that the tables were very likel