eady put aside for that
purpose. While the speakers, therefore, were to her invisible, their
conversation was as audible as if she had been in the boudoir.

"And what news abroad, my good Lord?" asked Sir Thomas, when the usual
formal civilities were over.

"Very ill news," said Lord Strange, sadly.

"Pray your Lordship, what so? We hear none here, lying so far from the
Queen's highway."

"What heard you the last?"

"Well, methinks it were some strange matter touching the Scottish Queen,
as though she should be set to trial on charge of some matter of
knowledge of Babington's treason."

Sir Thomas's latest news, therefore, was about seven months old. There
were no daily papers and Reuter's telegrams in his day.

"Good Sir Thomas, you have much to hear," replied his guest. "For the
Scottish Queen, she is dead and buried,--beheaden at Fotheringay Castle,
in Yorkshire, these three months gone."

"Gramercy!"

"'Tis very true, I do ensure you. And would God that were the worst
news I could tell you!"

"Pray your Lordship, speak quickly."

"There be afloat strange things of private import:--to wit, of my
kinsman the Earl of Arundel, who, as 'tis rumoured, shall this next
month be tried by the Star Chamber, and, as is thought, if he 'scape
with life, shall be heavily charged in goods [Note 1]: or the Black
Assize at Exeter this last year, whereby, through certain Portugals that
were prisoners on trial, the ill smells did so infect the Court, [Note
2] that many died thereof--of the common people very many, and divers
men of worship,--among other Sir John Chichester of Raleigh, that you
and I were wont to know, and Sir Arthur Basset of Umberleigh--"

Barbara Polwhele heard no more for a while. The name that had been last
mentioned meant, to Lord Strange and Sir Thomas, the head of a county
family of Devonshire, a gentleman of first-class blood. But to her it
meant not only the great-grandson of Edward the Fourth, and the heir of
the ruined House of Lisle,--but the bright-faced boy who, twenty-seven
years before, used to flash in and out of John Avery's house in the
Minories,--bringing "Aunt Philippa's loving commendations," or news that
"Aunt Bridget looketh this next week to be in the town, and will be rare
fain to see Mistress Avery:"--the boy who had first seen the light at
Calais, on the very threshold of the family woe--and who, to the Averys,
and to Barbara, as their retainer, was the breathing repres