st, have past and are perhaps atoned for; and her fair face
hangs a pitiful dream in the memory even of those who knew that either
she, or England, must perish.
"Nothing is left of her
Now, but pure womanly."
And Mrs. Leigh, Protestant as she is, breathes a prayer, that the Lord
may have mercy on that soul, as "clear as diamond, and as hard," as she
said of herself. That last scene, too, before the fatal block--it could
not be altogether acting. Mrs. Leigh had learned many a priceless lesson
in the last seven years; might not Mary Stuart have learned something
in seventeen? And Mrs. Leigh had been a courtier, and knew, as far as a
chaste Englishwoman could know (which even in those coarser days was not
very much), of that godless style of French court profligacy in which
poor Mary had had her youthful training, amid the Medicis, and the
Guises, and Cardinal Lorraine; and she shuddered, and sighed to
herself"--To whom little is given, of them shall little be required!"
But still the bells pealed on and would not cease.
What was that which answered them from afar out of the fast darkening
twilight? A flash, and then the thunder of a gun at sea.
Mrs. Leigh stopped. The flash was right outside the bar. A ship in
distress it could not be. The wind was light and westerly. It was a
high spring-tide, as evening floods are always there. What could it be?
Another flash, another gun. The noisy folks of Northam were hushed at
once, and all hurried into the churchyard which looks down on the broad
flats and the river.
There was a gallant ship outside the bar. She was running in, too, with
all sails set. A large ship; nearly a thousand tons she might be; but
not of English rig. What was the meaning of it? A Spanish cruiser about
to make reprisals for Drake's raid along the Cadiz shore! Not that,
surely. The Don had no fancy for such unscientific and dare-devil
warfare. If he came, he would come with admiral, rear-admiral, and
vice-admiral, transports, and avisos, according to the best-approved
methods, articles, and science of war. What could she be?
Easily, on the flowing tide and fair western wind, she has slipped
up the channel between the two lines of sandhill. She is almost off
Appledore now. She is no enemy; and if she be a foreigner, she is a
daring one, for she has never veiled her topsails,--and that, all know,
every foreign ship must do within sight of an English port, or stand the
chance of war; as t
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