For ever wrangling, rude. His glance is sinister,
Stealthy: his laughter a sardonic sneer.
I would rather face a vulture o’er a corpse,
Than such a man, whose hell is in himself.
He is a tree of death.”
Gardiner may well wince as he replies:
“You have a caustic brush:
The canvas burns beneath it.”
Yet poor Queen Mary fondly looks forward to the coming of her affianced as (to borrow Byron’s exquisite metaphor)
“the rainbow of her future years—