The captive paused at that cry, and a sad and patient smile of
inexpressible melancholy and sweetness hovered over his lips. Henry
still retained much of the personal comeliness he possessed at the
time when Margaret of Anjou, the theme of minstrel and minne singer,
left her native court of poets for the fatal throne of England. But
beauty, usually so popular and precious a gift to kings, was not in
him of that order which commanded the eye and moved the admiration of
a turbulent people and a haughty chivalry. The features, if regular,
were small; their expression meek and timid; the form, though tall,
was not firm-knit and muscular; the lower limbs were too thin, the
body had too much flesh, the delicate hands betrayed the sickly
paleness of feeble health; there was a dreamy vagueness in the clear
soft blue eyes, and a listless absence of all energy in the habitual
bend, the slow, heavy, sauntering tread,--all about that benevolent
aspect, that soft voice, that resigned mien, and gentle manner, spoke
the exquisite, unresisting goodness, which provoked the lewd to taunt,
the hardy to despise, the insolent to rebel; for the foes of a king in
stormy times are often less his vices than his virtues.

"And now, good my lord," said Adam, hastening, with eager hands, to
assist the bearer in depositing the model on the table--"now will I
explain to you the contrivance which it hath cost me long years of
patient toil to shape from thought into this iron form."

"But first," said Allerton, "were it not well that these good people
withdrew? A contriver likes not others to learn his secret ere the
time hath come to reap its profits."

"Surely, surely!" said Adam, and alarmed at the idea thus suggested,
he threw the folds of his gown over the model.