finding himself in the presence of Margaret of Anjou, who, not seeing
him in the parlour of reception, had stept upon the balcony, that she
might meet with him the sooner.

The Queen's dress was black, without any ornament except a gold
coronal of an inch in breadth, restraining her long black tresses, of
which advancing years, and misfortunes, had partly altered the hue.
There was placed within the circlet a black plume with a red rose, the
last of the season, which the good father who kept the garden had
presented to her that morning, as the badge of her husband's house.
Care, fatigue, and sorrow, seemed to dwell on her brow and her
features. To another messenger, she would in all probability have
administered a sharp rebuke, for not being alert in his duty to
receive her as she entered; but Arthur's age and appearance
corresponded with that of her loved and lost son. He was the son of a
lady whom Margaret had loved with almost sisterly affection, and the
presence of Arthur continued to excite in the dethroned queen the same
feelings of maternal tenderness which they had awakened on their first
meeting in the Cathedral of Strasburg. She raised him as he kneeled at
her feet, spoke to him with much kindness, and encouraged him to
detail at full length his father's message, and such other news as his
brief residence at Dijon had made him acquainted with.

* * * * *

As she spoke, she sunk down as one who needs rest, on a stone-seat
placed on the very verge of the balcony, regardless of the storm,
which now began to rise with dreadful gusts of wind, the course of
which being intermitted and altered by the crags round which they
howled, it seemed as if in very deed Boreas, and Eurus, and Caurus,
unchaining the winds from every quarter of heaven, were contending for
mastery around the convent of our Lady of Victory. Amid this tumult,
and amid billows of mist which concealed the bottom of the precipice,
and masses of clouds which racked tearfully over their heads, the roar
of the descending waters rather resembled the fall of cataracts than
the rushing of torrents of rain. The seat on which Margaret had placed
herself was in a considerable degree sheltered from the storm, but its
eddies, varying in every direction, often tossed aloft her dishevelled
hair; and we cannot describe the appearance of her noble and
beautiful, yet ghastly and wasted features, agitated strongly by
anxious hesitati