ffeta cast under the arm, and their hair loose
about their shoulders curiously knotted and interlaced. The
masquers were Lady Dorothy (Sidney), Miss Fitton, Miss
Carey, Miss Onslow, Miss Southwell, Miss Bess Russell, Miss
Darcy, and Lady Blanch Somerset, who danced to the music
that Apollo brought; and a fine speech was made of a _ninth_
muse, much to her praise and honor. "Delicate," says the
narrator, "it was to see eight ladies so prettily and richly
attired." Miss Fitton led; and after they had finished their
own ceremonies, the eight lady masquers chose eight other
ladies to dance the measures. Miss Fitton went to the queen
and wooed her to the dance. The queen asked what she was.
"Affection," was the answer. "Affection!" said the queen,
"affection is false!" yet she rose and danced as did the
Marchioness of Winchester.

Poor, sad old queen, clinging like a child--like the true daughter of
her hapless mother Anne Boleyn--to any amusement, excitement, display,
that could divert her weary thoughts from her loneliness, from the
burdening cares of state; with her bitter jibe at the falseness of
affection, yet rising and dancing a measure with her maids of honor. It
is as pathetic a picture as one can look upon.

So ends the record of the gay wedding at Blackfriars. But alas! within a
fortnight the marriage rejoicings were turned into mourning. Our
beautiful Bess Russell, the child of the court, the child of the Abbey,
was consumptive. She grew rapidly worse, and a fortnight after her
sister Anne's wedding she was dead. Her illness indeed, at the last, was
so sudden that it gave rise to an absurd story, which was commonly
believed one hundred and fifty years ago; namely, that she died of the
prick of a needle in her finger which produced gangrene. This however is
a mere fable, and only came into existence some seventy years after her
death. She was buried in Westminster Abbey--that Abbey under whose
shadow she was born, within whose walls she was christened. Well may
Dean Stanley call her "the child of Westminster."

Her beautiful monument stands in the Chapel of St. Edmund, near that of
her father, and of John of Eltham. She sits "in a curiously wrought
osier chair," leaning her head upon her hand, and pointing at the skull,
on which her right foot rests, with an expression on her face of great
sadness and sweetness. On the richly carved pedestal upon which the