e, but looked older, and her frame
was large, bony, and masculine, which in the facial portraits that had
been sent to Henry was not indicated, and her large, low-German features,
deeply pitted with the ravages of smallpox, were, as Browne knew, the very
opposite of the type of beauty which would be likely to stimulate a gross,
unwholesome voluptuary of nearly fifty. So, with a sinking heart, he went
back to his master, not daring to prepare him for what was before him by
any hint of disparagement of the bride. As soon as Henry entered with
Russell and Browne and saw for himself, his countenance fell, and he made
a wry face, which those who knew him understood too well; and they
trembled in their shoes at what was to come of it. He nevertheless greeted
the lady politely, raising her from the kneeling position she had assumed,
and kissed her upon the cheek, passing a few minutes in conversation with
her about her long journey. He had brought with him some rich presents of
sables and other furs; but he was "so marvellously astonished and abashed"
that he had not the heart to give them to her, but sent them the next
morning with a cold message by Sir Anthony Browne.

In the night the royal barge had been brought round from Gravesend to
Rochester, and the King returned to Greenwich in the morning by water. He
had hardly passed another word with Anne since the first meeting, though
they had supped together, and it was with a sulky, frowning face that he
took his place in the shelter of his galley. Turning to Russell, he asked,
"Do you think this woman so fair or of such beauty as report has made
her?" Russell, courtier-like, fenced with the question by feigning to
misunderstand it. "I should hardly take her to be fair," he replied, "but
of brown complexion." "Alas!" continued the King, "whom should men trust?
I promise you I see no such thing in her as hath been showed unto me of
her, and am ashamed that men have so praised her as they have done. I like
her not."[199] To Browne he was quite as outspoken. "I see nothing in
this woman as men report of her," he said angrily, "and I am surprised
that wise men should make such reports as they have done." Whereat Browne,
who knew that his brother-in-law, Fitzwilliam, was one of the "wise men"
referred to, scented danger and was silent. The English ladies, too, who
had accompanied Anne on the road began to whisper in confidence to their
spouses that Anne's manners were coarse, and th