Page:Catherine of Bragança, infanta of Portugal, & queen-consort of England.djvu/98

68 conclusion of the interview, which was of the most flattering sort, Sandwich was taken to the splendid apartments of the Marquez Castello Rodrigo, which had been put at the disposal of himself and his suite, and there they were all sumptuously entertained. Nothing was spared to mark the pride and joy Portugal felt at the marriage.

It was not for two days that Sandwich was allowed a sight of the bride-to-be. The same tedious etiquette and ceremony forbade a shorter interval to elapse before he was received by herself and her mother. Sandwich, a sensible man, and a favourite at court, must have gone to that interview with feelings of the liveliest curiosity and interest. Not only was he, like his whole country, deeply anxious to know what manner of Queen they were to get, but the diverse and contradictory descriptions that had been set abroad about her must have made him extremely desirous of judging for himself what she was like. That he was favourably impressed is more than probable, from the subsequent accounts he gave of her.

Catherine was now just twenty-three and a half. She was extraordinarily girlish and unformed in looks, as her contemporary portraits show us, and might have been taken for sixteen by her appearance. She wore the appallingly hideous farthingale, which was the mode of Queen Elizabeth's days in England, but which the conservative Portuguese ladies had never given up, and considered the costume of their country. Her hair was dressed in the frightful style Miss Strickland has described, a mode that might have made Venus herself plain. Yet her clear olive complexion, with its warm glow, her fine expressive eyes, and the look of fresh innocence and almost childish simplicity, must have made her very charming.

Sandwich was doubtless received by the Queen-Regent and by Catherine with the same complimentary warmth he had already met with from Alphonzo. In