tightly pursed up, to prevent the indecorous exhibition which the
wicked courtier had provoked. But it would not do: one and all the
twenty lips broke into a smile,--but a smile so tortured, constrained,
and nipped in the bud, that it only gave an expression of pain to the
features it was forbidden to enliven.

"And what brings the Lord Hastings hither?" asked the baroness, in a
formal tone.

"Can you never allow for motive the desire of pleasure, fair dame?"

That peculiar and exquisite blush, which at moments changed the whole
physiognomy of Katherine, flitted across her smooth cheek, and
vanished. She said gravely,--

"So much do I allow it in you, my lord, that hence my question."

"Katherine!" exclaimed Hastings, in a voice of tender reproach, and
attempting to seize her hand, forgetful of all other presence save
that to which the blush, that spoke of old, gave back the ancient
charm.

Katherine cast a hurried and startled glance over the maiden group,
and her eye detected on the automaton faces one common expression of
surprise. Humbled and deeply displeased, she rose from the awful
chair, and then, as suddenly reseating herself, she said, with a voice
and lip of the most cutting irony, "My lord chamberlain is, it seems,
so habituated to lackey his king amidst the goldsmiths and grocers,
that he forgets the form of language and respect of bearing which a
noblewoman of repute is accustomed to consider seemly."