ather, though not with the husband.
But, fortunately, as it seemed to her, she (a Frenchwoman by birth) had
passed her youth in the service of Margaret of Anjou, and that haughty
queen, who was equally warm to friends and inexorable to enemies, had,
on her attendant's marriage, promised to ensure the fortunes of her
offspring. Sibyll at the age of nine--between seven and eight years
before the date the story enters on, and two years prior to the fatal
field of Towton, which gave to Edward the throne of England--had been
admitted among the young girls whom the custom of the day ranked amidst
the attendants of the queen; and in the interval that elapsed before
Margaret was obliged to dismiss her to her home, her mother died. She
died without foreseeing the reverses that were to ensue, in the hope
that her child, at least, was nobly provided for, and not without
the belief (for there is so much faith in love!) that her husband's
researches, which in his youth had won favour of the Protector Duke of
Gloucester, the most enlightened prince of his time, would be crowned at
last with the rewards and favours of his king. That precise period was,
indeed, the fairest that had yet dawned upon the philosopher. Henry VI.,
slowly recovering from one of those attacks which passed for imbecility,
had condescended to amuse himself with various conversations with
Warner, urged to it first by representations of the unholy nature of
the student's pursuits; and, having satisfied his mind of his learned
subject's orthodoxy, the poor monarch had taken a sort of interest, not
so much, perhaps, in the objects of Warner's occupations, as in that
complete absorption from actual life which characterized the subject,
and gave him in this a melancholy resemblance to the king. While the
House of Lancaster was on the throne, the wife felt that her husband's
pursuits would be respected, and his harmless life safe from the fierce
prejudices of the people; and the good queen would not suffer him to
starve, when the last mark was expended in devices how to benefit his
country:--and in these hopes the woman died!

A year afterwards, all at court was in disorder,--armed men supplied the
service of young girls, and Sibyll, with a purse of broad pieces, soon
converted into manuscripts, was sent back to her father's desolate home.
There had she grown a flower amidst ruins, with no companion of her own
age, and left to bear, as her sweet and affectionate nature