Vain in prosperity, what wonder that she was so abject in misfortune?
What wonder that even while, in later and gloomier years, [Grafton,
806] accusing Richard III. of the murder of her royal sons, and
knowing him, at least, the executioner of her brother and her child by
the bridegroom of her youth, [Anthony Lord Rivers, and Lord Richard
Gray. Not the least instance of the frivolity of Elizabeth's mind is
to be found in her willingness, after all the woes of her second
widowhood, and when she was not very far short of sixty years old, to
take a third husband, James III., of Scotland,--a marriage prevented
only by the death of the Scotch king.] she consented to send her
daughters to his custody, though subjected to the stain of
illegitimacy, and herself only recognized as the harlot?

The king, meanwhile, had ridden out betimes alone, and no other of the
male sex presumed in his absence to invade the female circle. It was
with all a girl's fresh delight that Anne escaped at last to her own
chamber, where she found Sibyll; and, with her guidance, she threaded
the gloomy mazes of the Tower. "Let me see," she whispered, "before
we visit your father, let me see the turret in which the unhappy Henry
is confined."

And Sibyll led her through the arch of that tower, now called "The
Bloody," and showed her the narrow casement deep sunk in the mighty
wall, without which hung the starling in the cage, basking its plumes
in the wintry sun. Anne gazed with that deep interest and tender
reverence which the parent of the man she loves naturally excites in a
woman; and while thus standing sorrowful and silent, the casement was
unbarred, and she saw the mild face of the human captive; he seemed to
talk to the bird, which, in shrill tones and with clapping wings,
answered his address. At that time a horn sounded at a little