the gallery floors, his face distorted by stormy passion, his lips
white and murmuring, his beauty and his glory dimmed and humbled,--the
spectator might have half believed that while Edward gazed upon those
harmless sleepers, A VISION OF THE TRAGEDY TO COME had stricken down
his thought of guilt, and filled up its place with horror,--a vision
of a sleep as pure, of two forms wrapped in an embrace as fond, of
intruders meditating a crime scarce fouler than his own; and the sins
of the father starting into grim corporeal shapes, to become the
deathsmen of the sons!




CHAPTER III.

NEW DANGERS TO THE HOUSE OF YORK--AND THE KING'S HEART ALLIES ITSELF
WITH REBELLION AGAINST THE KING'S THRONE.

Oh, beautiful is the love of youth to youth, and touching the
tenderness of womanhood to woman; and fair in the eyes of the happy
sun is the waking of holy sleep, and the virgin kiss upon virgin lips
smiling and murmuring the sweet "Good-morrow!"

Anne was the first to wake; and as the bright winter morn, robust with
frosty sunbeams shone cheerily upon Sibyll's face, she was struck with
a beauty she had not sufficiently observed the day before; for in the
sleep of the young the traces of thought and care vanish, the aching
heart is lulled in the body's rest, the hard lines relax into flexile
ease, a softer, warmer bloom steals over the cheek, and, relieved from
the stiff restraints of dress, the rounded limbs repose in a more