this hour."

"I believe your Highness; for the Lord Richard Plantagenet is not one of
the Woodvilles. The mirth is theirs to-day."

"Let who will have mirth,--it is the breath of a moment. Mirth cannot
tarnish glory,--the mirror in which the gods are glassed."

"I understand you, my lord," said the proud lady; and her face, before
stern and high, brightened into so lovely a change, so soft and winning
a smile, that Gloucester no longer marvelled that that smile had rained
so large an influence on the fate and heart of his favourite Hastings.
The beauty of this noble woman was indeed remarkable in its degree, and
peculiar in its character. She bore a stronger likeness in feature to
the archbishop than to either of her other brothers; for the prelate
had the straight and smooth outline of the Greeks,--not like Montagu and
Warwick, the lordlier and manlier aquiline of the Norman race,--and
his complexion was feminine in its pale clearness. But though in this
resembling the subtlest of the brethren, the fair sister shared with
Warwick an expression, if haughty, singularly frank and candid in its
imperious majesty; she had the same splendid and steady brilliancy
of eye, the same quick quiver of the lip, speaking of nervous
susceptibility and haste of mood. The hateful fashion of that day which
pervaded all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, was the prodigal
use of paints and cosmetics, and all imaginable artificial adjuncts of a
spurious beauty. This extended often even to the men, and the sturdiest
warrior deemed it no shame to recur to such arts of the toilet as the
vainest wanton in our day would never venture to acknowledge. But the
Lady Bonville, proudly confident of her beauty, and possessing a purity
of mind that revolted from the littleness of courting admiration,
contrasted forcibly in this the ladies of the court. Her cheek was of a
marble whiteness, though occasionally a rising flush through the clear,
rich, transparent skin showed that in earlier youth the virgin bloom had
not been absent from the surface. There was in her features, when they
reposed, somewhat of the trace of suffering,--of a struggle, past it may
be, but still remembered. But when she spoke, those features lighted
up and undulated in such various and kindling life as to dazzle, to
bewitch, or to awe the beholder, according as the impulse moulded the
expression. Her dress suited her lofty and spotless character. Henry
VI. might have contemp