From day to day, from year to year, her hopes had fallen away one by one. Her spirits, so buoyant and elastic once, had now subsided into a heavy, settled gloom; her very charms were but a wreck and shadow of their former glory. For a time she had endeavored, by all those beautiful occupations of the pencil, the needle, or the lyre, in which none had equalled her in her young days of happiness, to while away the deep and engrossing weariness which by long endurance becomes even worse than pain. For a time she had been permitted to vary the monotony of her domestic labors by her favorite exercises in the field and forest. Surrounded by a train of mail-clad horsemen, warders with bended bows and loaded arquebuses, she had a few times been allowed to ride forth into the free woodland, and to forget, amid the gay sights and heart-stirring sounds of the chase, the cares that were heavy at her heart. But how should that heart forget, when at every turn it encountered the haggard eye of the anxious keeper--anxious, for the slightest relaxation of his duty were certain death! How should the ear thrill to the enlivening music of the pack, or to the wild flourish of the bugles, when the clash of steel announced on every side the minions of her oppressor? How should the gallop over the velvet turf, beneath the luxuriant shadow of the immemorial oaks, convey aught of freshness to the spirit that was about to return thence to chambers no less a dungeon for being decked with the mockeries of state, than though they had presented to the eye those common accessories of bar, and grate, and chain, which they failed not to set before the mind? After a while, even these liberties were curtailed! It seemed too much of freedom, that the titular sovereign of three realms--the cynosure of every eye, the beauty at whose very name every heart thrilled and every pulse bounded--should be permitted to taste the common air of heaven, even when hemmed in, without the possibility of escape, by guards armed to the teeth, and sworn to exercise those arms, not only against all who should attempt the rescue, but against the miserable captive herself, should she attempt to profit by any efforts made for her release!