imagination, and she could have had no more congenial a theme upon which
to write, if she had been given free choice of all the characters in the
history book.

"'Whom the gods love die young,'" she began, and paused. It seemed an
excellent opening, if she could only continue in the same strain, but
what ought to come next? Her thoughts flew to a painting of Lady Jane
Grey, which she had once seen at a loan collection of Tudor portraits.
Why should she not describe it? Her pen flew rapidly as she wrote a
word-picture of the sweet, pale face, so round and childish in spite of
its earnest expression; the smooth yellow hair, the gray eyes bent
demurely over the book. Her heroine seemed beginning to live. Now for
her surroundings. A year ago Winona had paid a visit to Hampton Court,
and her remembrance of its associations was still keen and vivid. She
described its old-world garden by the side of the Thames, where the
little King Edward VI. must often have roamed with his pretty cousin
Jane: the two wonderful ill-starred children, playing for a brief hour
in happy unconsciousness of the fate that faced them. What did they talk
about, she asked, as they stood on the paved terrace and watched the
river hurrying by? Plato, perchance, and his philosophy, or the
marvelous geography-book with woodcuts of foreign beasts that had been
specially printed for the young king's use. Did they compare notes about
their tutors? Jane would certainly hold a brief for her much-loved Mr.
Elmer, who, in sharp contrast to her parents' severity, taught her so
gently and patiently that she grudged the time which was not spent in
his presence. Edward might bemoan the ill-luck of his whipping-boy, who
had to bear the floggings which Court etiquette denied to the royal
shoulders, and perhaps would declare that when he was grown up, and
could make the laws himself, no children should be beaten for badly said
lessons, and Jane would agree with him, and then they would pick the red