Her features were sensitive, well-shaped, and showed both wit and melancholy, her eyes were pale brown and languid-lidded, and her lips were compressed in a decided line which indicated courage and determination; yet the prevailing impression she made was of great modesty and feminine tenderness.
At her breast, fastened with a knot of blue silk, was a long trail of yellow jasmine and a white rose.
"If I had been the Queen," she said, "I would not have gone to France."
"She went to gain succour, Margaret," returned Sir Charles Lucas.
"Another could have gone," insisted the lady, resting her dreamy eyes on her very lovely white hands which bore several curious pearl rings. "If I had a lord and he was in the situation of His Blessed Majesty, I would not have left him, no, not for two worlds packed with joys."
"The Queen went in April," replied the Cavalier, "and then matters did not look to be past mending."
"Yet, methinks," said Margaret Lucas, "that any one might have perceived such a temper in the Roundheads that they would not easily see reason. And, dear Charles, the King had been defied at Hull—what was that but a portent of this?
"However," she added at once, "it is not for me to speak so of my sovereign lady. Oh, Charles, what a heaviness and melancholy doth encumber my spirits! See how the sky is also stormy and doth presage a tempest in the heavens, even as men's actions hasten a tempest on earth."
"Thine is not the only heart filled with foreboding to-day. Many eyes are already bitter with tears which shall be shed till their founts are dry before these troubles end," replied the young man. "But it is not for us to lament the tearing asunder of England, but to remember for which purpose we came hither from Colchester to pay our duty to the King, and renew our oaths of fealty before his banner which shall to-day be raised."