which with me he might have missed. But, oh! Lucy, there are moments when I
long with heart-sick longing for my joyous, if wilful child, who, on a fair
spring evening long ago, sat astride on Sir Philip's horse, and had for
his one wish to be such another brave and noble gentleman!

'Methinks this wish is gaining strength, and that the strange repression of
all natural feeling which I sometimes notice, may vanish 'neath the
brighter shining of love--God's love and his mother's.

'You would scarce believe, could you see Ambrose, that he--so tall and
thin, with quiet and restrained movements and seldom smiling mouth--could
be the little torment of Ford Place! Four years have told on my boy, like
thrice that number, and belike the terrible ravages of the fever may have
taken something of his youthful spring away.

'He is tender and gentle to me, but there is reserve.

'On one subject we can exchange but few words; you will know what that
subject is. From the little I can gather, I think his father was not unkind
to him; and far be it from me to forget the parting words, when the soul
was standing ready to take its flight into the unseen world. But oh! my
sister, how wide the gulf set between him, for whom the whole world, I may
say, wears mourning garb to-day--for foreign countries mourn no less than
England--how wide, I say, is the gulf set between that noble life and his,
of whom I dare not write, scarce dare to think.

'Yet God's mercy is infinite in Christ Jesus, and the gulf, which looks so
wide to us, may be bridged over by that same infinite mercy.

'God grant it.

'This with my humble, dutiful sympathy to your dear lady, the Countess of
Pembroke, for whom no poor words of man can be of comfort, from your loving
sister,

MARY GIFFORD.

'_Post Scriptum._--Master Humphrey Ratcliffe has proved a true friend to
me, and to my boy. To him, under God, I owe my child's restoration to
health, and to me.

'He is away with that solemn and sorrowful train I saw embark for Flushing,
nor do I know when he will return.

M. G.'

* * * * *

'At Penshurst, in the month of February 1586,--For you, my dear sister
Mary, I will write some account of the sorrowful pageant, from witnessing
which I have lately returned to Penshurst with my dear and sorely-stricken
mistress, and all words would fail me to tell you how heavy is her grief,
and how nobly she has borne herself under its weight.