looked helplessly round, and his lady was ready at once to
relieve him. "My precious! My sweetheart! My jewel! Did he look
sour at her and frighten her with his ugsome beard?" and the like
endearments common to grandmothers in all ages.

"But where is the princess?"

"Where? Where should she be but here? Her grandame's own precious,
royal, queenly little darling!" and as a fresh cry broke out, "Yes,
yes; she shall to her presence chamber. Usher her, Gilbert."

"Bess's brat!" muttered Dame Mary, in ineffable disappointment.

Curiosity and the habit of obedience to the Countess carried the entire
troop on to the grand apartments on the south side, where Queen Mary
had been lodged while the fiction of her guestship had been kept up.
Lady Shrewsbury was all the time trying to hush the child, who was
quite old enough to be terrified by new faces and new scenes, and who
was besides tired and restless in her swaddling bands, for which she
was so nearly too old that she had only been kept in them for greater
security upon the rough and dangerous roads. Great was my lady's
indignation on reaching the state rooms on finding that no nursery
preparations had been made, and her daughter Mary, with a giggle hardly
repressed by awe of her mother, stood forth and said, "Why, verily, my
lady, we expected some great dame, my Lady Margaret or my Lady Hunsdon
at the very least, when you spoke of a princess."

"And who should it be but one who has both the royal blood of England
and Scotland in her veins? You have not saluted the child to whom you
have the honour to be akin, Mary! On your knee, minion; I tell you she
hath as good or a better chance of wearing a crown as any woman in
England."

"She hath a far better chance of a prison," muttered the Earl, "if all
this foolery goes on."

"What! What is that? What are you calling these honours to my orphan
princess?" cried the lady, but the princess herself here broke in with
the lustiest of squalls, and Susan, who was sorry for the child,
contrived to insert an entreaty that my lady would permit her to be
taken at once to the nursery chamber that had been made ready for her,
and let her there be fed, warmed, and undressed at once.

There was something in the quality of Susan's voice to which people
listened, and the present necessity overcame the Countess's desire to
assert the dignity of her granddaughter, so she marched out of the room
attended by the women, while the