The Countess of Warwick was a rather slightly-made woman, but tall, with a long pale face, haggard features bearing traces of great former beauty, and a particularly prominent pair of blue eyes.[#] As is often the case with persons who exhibit the last-named feature, she was at no loss for language. She was the daughter, and now the only surviving child, of that Earl of Warwick who had held a conspicuous place in the burning of the Maid of Orleans, and of Isabel, heiress of Le Despenser. All the old prestige and associations of the House of Warwick centred in her, not her husband. How far her influence over him may have been for good or evil, is not an easy question. What evidence there is, is mostly negative, and tends to show that the Countess Anne exercised but little influence of any kind, and was of a type likely to be more concerned about the burning of the marchpane in her own oven, than about the burning of a city at some distance. If this be so, she is much to be pitied: for of the seed of future misery which Warwick sowed, the heaviest portion of the harvest was reaped by her and by the best and dearest of her daughters.
[#] All the members of the Warwick family, and also those of the royal family, are described so far as is practicable from contemporary portraits.
The young Duchess of Clarence, who was in her nineteenth year, was a woman cast in another mould. She resembled her father in character, and her mother in features: but she was more beautiful than the Countess had ever been, and was accounted "the finest young lady in England." She was fair, with blue eyes and shining light hair, over which she wore the new head-dress, which consisted of a most elaborate erection of wire-work, surmounted by a veil of transparent gauze, so that the hair, for many years concealed, was left fully visible.
Head-dresses were now, and for a long time had been, the most important portion of the female costume. The variety was nearly as astounding as the size. Hearts, horns, crowns, and steeples, were all represented: and a full-dressed lady, in all her paraphernalia, was a formidable object both as to cost and dimensions.
Frideswide found herself put through a lively fire of interrogatories by the Countess, who might have been projecting the writing of memoirs of the whole Marnell family, to judge from the minute and numerous details into which she descended. The Duchess sat generally a silent listener, but occasionally interjected a query. At last the Countess looked across the room, and summoned Avice.
