murderous blade against the boy-heir of Lancaster descend--descend!
Her passion, her terror, at the spectre which fancy thus evoked,
seized and overcame her; and ere the last hurrah sent its hollow echo
to the raftered roof, she sank from her chair to the ground, hueless
and insensible as the dead.

The king had not without design permitted the unwonted presence of the
women in this warlike audience,--partly because he was not unaware of
the ambitious spirit of Isabel, partly because he counted on the
affection shown to his boyhood by the countess, who was said to have
singular influence over her lord, but principally because in such a
presence he trusted to avoid all discussion and all questioning, and
to leave the effect of his eloquence, in which he excelled all his
contemporaries, Gloucester alone excepted, single and unimpaired; and
therefore, as he rose, and returned with a majestic bend the
acclamation of the warriors, his eye now turned towards the chairs
where the ladies sat, and he was the first to perceive the swoon of
the fair Anne.

With the tender grace that always characterized his service to women,
he descended promptly from his throne, and raised the lifeless form in
his stalwart arms; and Anne, as he bent over her, looked so strangely
lovely in her marble stillness, that even in that hour a sudden thrill
shot through a heart always susceptible to beauty as the harp-string
to the breeze.

"It is but the heat, lady," said he, to the alarmed countess, "and let
me hope that interest which my fair kinswoman may take in the fortunes
of Warwick and of York, hitherto linked together--"