well did,
the contrast between the luxuries of a court and the penury of a hearth
which, year after year, hunger and want came more and more sensibly to
invade.

Sibyll had been taught, even as a child, some accomplishments little
vouchsafed then to either sex,--she could read and write; and Margaret
had not so wholly lost, in the sterner North, all reminiscence of
the accomplishments that graced her father's court as to neglect the
education of those brought up in her household. Much attention was given
to music, for it soothed the dark hours of King Henry; the blazoning of
missals or the lives of saints, with the labours of the loom, were also
among the resources of Sibyll's girlhood, and by these last she had,
from time to time, served to assist the maintenance of the little
family of which, child though she was, she became the actual head. But
latterly--that is, for the last few weeks--even these sources failed
her; for as more peaceful times allowed her neighbours to interest
themselves in the affairs of others, the dark reports against Warner had
revived. His name became a by-word of horror; the lonely light at the
lattice burning till midnight, against all the early usages and habits
of the day; the dark smoke of the furnace, constant in summer as in
winter, scandalized the religion of the place far and near. And finding,
to their great dissatisfaction, that the king's government and the
Church interfered not for their protection, and unable themselves
to volunteer any charges against the recluse (for the cows in the
neighbourhood remained provokingly healthy), they came suddenly, and,
as it were by one of those common sympathies which in all times the huge
persecutor we call the PUBLIC manifests when a victim is to be crushed,
to the pious resolution of starving where they could not burn. Why buy
the quaint devilries of the wizard's daughter?--no luck could come of
it. A missal blazoned by such hands, an embroidery worked at such a
loom, was like the Lord's Prayer read backwards. And one morning, when
poor Sibyll stole out as usual to vend a month's labour, she was driven
from door to door with oaths and curses.

Though Sibyll's heart was gentle, she was not without a certain strength
of mind. She had much of the patient devotion of her mother, much of the
quiet fortitude of her father's nature. If not comprehending to the full
the loftiness of Warner's pursuits, she still anticipated from them an
ultimate suc