She revered, and loved, and never upbraided him.

Her heart was the martyr to his mind.

Had she foreseen the future destinies of her daughter, it might have been otherwise.

She could have remonstrated with the father, though not with the husband.
But, fortunately, as it seemed to her, she (a Frenchwoman by birth) had passed her youth in the service of Margaret of Anjou, and that haughty queen, who was equally warm to friends and inexorable to enemies, had, on her attendant's marriage, promised to ensure the fortunes of her offspring.

Sibyll at the age of nine--between seven and eight years before the date the story enters on, and two years prior to the fatal field of Towton, which gave to Edward the throne of England--had been admitted among the young girls whom the custom of the day ranked amidst the attendants of the queen; and in the interval that elapsed before Margaret was obliged to dismiss her to her home, her mother died.