Yea, and make her hand secure as the bait to some foreign prince or
some English traitor, who would fain overthrow Queen and Church."

Susan shuddered. "Oh yes! let us keep the poor child to ourselves. I
_could_ not give her up to such a lot as that. And it might imperil
you too, my husband. I should like to get up instantly and burn the
scroll."

"I doubt me whether that were expedient," said Richard. "Suppose it
were in the course of providence that the young King of Scots should
not live, then would this maid be the means of uniting the two kingdoms
in the true and Reformed faith! Heaven forefend that he should be cut
off, but meseemeth that we have no right to destroy the evidence that
may one day be a precious thing to the kingdom at large."

"No chance eye could read it even were it discovered?" said Susan.

"No, indeed. Thou knowest how I strove in vain to read it at first,
and even now, when Frank Talbot unwittingly gave me the key, it was
days before I could fully read it. It will tell no tales, sweet wife,
that can prejudice any one, so we will let it be, even with the baby
clouts. So now to sleep, with no more thoughts on the matter."

That was easy to say, but Susan lay awake long, pondering over the
wonder, and only slept to dream strange dreams of queens and
princesses, ay, and worse, for she finally awoke with a scream,
thinking her husband was on the scaffold, and that Humfrey and Cis were
walking up the ladder, hand in hand with their necks bared, to follow
him!

There was no need to bid her hold her tongue. She regarded the secret
with dread and horror, and a sense of something amiss which she could
not quite define, though she told herself she was only acting in
obedience to her husband, and indeed her judgment went along with his.

Often she looked at the unconscious Cis, studying whether the child's
parentage could be detected in her features. But she gave promise of
being of larger frame than her mother, who had the fine limbs and
contour of her Lorraine ancestry, whereas Cis did, as Richard said,
seem to have the sturdy outlines of the Borderer race from whom her
father came. She was round-faced too, and sunburnt, with deep gray
eyes under black straight brows, capable of frowning heavily. She did
not look likely ever to be the fascinating beauty which all declared
her mother to be--though those who saw the captive at Sheffield,
believed the charm to be more in indefinable grace