CHAPTER IX.
Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words
Can no way move you to a milder form,
I'll woo you, like a soldier, at arm's end,
And love you 'gainst the nature of love.
Two Gentlemen of Verona.
The apartment to which the Lady Rowena had
been introduced was fitted up with some rude attempts at ornament and magnificence, and her being placed there might be considered as a peculiar
mark of respect not offered to the other prisoners.
But the wife of Front-de-Bœuf, for whom it had
been originally furnished, was long dead, and decay and neglect had impaired the few ornaments
with which her taste had adorned it. The tapestry
hung down from the walls in many places, and
in others was tarnished and faded under the effects of the sun, or tattered and decayed by age.
Desolate, however, as it was, this was the apart-