Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/245

 which was the essence of her being. His vow, it depended not on himself, poor fellow! "Never through me shall she suffer," was the fervent resolve. Alas! as if weak mortal hands could hold back giant Calamity, when he seizes the heart, and rends it at his pleasure.

royal party returned to Edinburgh, where the nuptials of Richard of England and the Lady Katherine were celebrated with splendour. Festivities of all kinds, tournaments, hunting parties, balls, succeeded to each other; but far beyond every outward demonstration was the real happiness insured by this marriage. Graced by Katherine, the little English court became a paradise. The princess assumed her new character among the exiles with facility; yet the phrase is bad, for Katherine could assume nothing, not even a virtue, if she had it not. In every position she was not princess, queen, patroness, or mistress; but woman merely—a true-hearted, gentle, refined woman. She was too young for the maternal character to be appropriate to her, yet the watchfulness and care she had for all resembled it. Her new subjects felt as if before they had been a disconnected, vagabond troop, and that dignity and station were assigned to them through her; through her the charities and elegances of life hallowed and adorned them. The quality most peculiarly her own was the divine simplicity which animated her look, her manners, her acts. Taintless simplicity, that best of fascinations, whose power is not imperious and sudden, but gradual and changeless, where every word spoken is but the genuine interpreter of the feelings of the heart, to which not only falsehood, but even the slightest disguise or affectation, is wholly foreign; and which is the more delicate,