comely, brave, gracious, and learned."

"A pest upon that learning,--it sicklies and womanizes men's minds!"
exclaimed Warwick, bluntly. "Perhaps it is his learning that I am to
thank for George of Clarence's fears and doubts and calculations and
scruples. His brother forbids his marriage with any English donzell,
for Edward dares not specialize what alone he dreads. His letters
burn with love, and his actions freeze with doubts. It was not thus I
loved thee, sweetheart. By all the saints in the calendar, had Henry
V. or the Lion Richard started from the tomb to forbid me thy hand, it
would but have made me a hotter lover! Howbeit Clarence shall decide
ere the moon wanes, and but for Isabel's tears and thy entreaties, my
father's grandchild should not have waited thus long the coming of so
hesitating a wooer. But lo, our darlings! Anne hath thine eyes,
m'amie; and she groweth more into my heart every day, since daily she
more favours thee."

While he thus spoke, the fair sisters came lightly and gayly up the
terrace: the arm of the statelier Isabel was twined round Anne's
slender waist; and as they came forward in that gentle link, with
their lithesome and bounding step, a happier blending of contrasted
beauty was never seen. The months that had passed since the sisters
were presented first to the reader had little changed the superb and
radiant loveliness of Isabel, but had added surprisingly to the
attractions of Anne. Her form was more rounded, her bloom more
ripened; and though something of timidity and bashfulness still
lingered about the grace of her movements and the glance of her dove-
like eye, the more earnest thoughts of the awakening woman gave sweet
intelligence to her countenance, and that divinest of all attractions
--the touching and conscious modesty--to the shy but tender smile, and