limpses, and from Antony Babington's descriptions. The presence
chamber was ample for the suite of the Queen, which had been reduced on
every fresh suspicion. There was in it, besides the Queen's four
ladies, an elderly one, with a close black silk hood--Jean Kennedy, or
Mrs. Kennett as the English called her; another, a thin slight figure,
with a worn face, as if a great sorrow had passed over her, making her
look older than her mistress, was the Queen's last remaining Mary,
otherwise Mrs. Seaton. The gossip of Sheffield had not failed to tell
how the chamberlain, Beatoun, had been her suitor, and she had half
consented to accept him when he was sent on a mission to France, and
there died. The dark-complexioned bright-eyed little lady, on a
smaller scale than the rest, was Marie de Courcelles, who, like the two
others, had been the Queen's companion in all her adventures; and the
fourth, younger and prettier than the rest, was already known to Cis
and her mother, since she was the Barbara Mowbray who was affianced to
Gilbert Curll, the Queen's Scottish secretary, recently taken into her
service. Both these were Protestants, and, like the Bridgefield
family, attended service in the castle chapel. They were all at work,
as was likewise their royal lady, to whom the girl, with the youthful
coyness that halts in the fulfilment of its dreams, did not at first
raise her eyes, having first taken in all the ladies, the several
portions of one great coverlet which they were all embroidering in
separate pieces, and the gentleman who was reading aloud to them from a
large book placed on a desk at which he was standing.

When she did look up, as the Queen was graciously requesting her mother
to be seated, and the Earl excusing himself from remaining longer, her
first impression was one of disappointment. Either the Queen of Scots
was less lovely seen leisurely close at hand than Antony Babington and
Cis's own fancy had painted her, or the last two or three years had
lessened her charms, as well they might, for she had struggled and
suffered much in the interval, had undergone many bitter
disappointments, and had besides endured much from rheumatism every
winter, indeed, even now she could not ride, and could only go out in a
carriage in the park on the finest days, looking forward to her annual
visit to Buxton to set her up for the summer. Her face was longer and
more pointed than in former days, her complexion had faded, or