and persecute the
Church of his father and his mother both. And so it was, that the lady
vowed that if another babe was granted to her, sprung of that last
strange miserable wedlock, these foes of hers should have no part in
it, nor knowledge of its very existence, but that it should be bred up
beyond their ken--safe out of their reach. Ah! child; good Nurse
Kennedy can best tell thee how the jealous eyes and ears were
disconcerted, and in secrecy and sorrow that birth took place."

Cis's heart was beating too fast for speech, but there was a tight
close pressure of the hand that Mary had placed within hers.

"The poor mother," went on the Queen in a low trembling voice, "durst
have scarce one hour's joy of her first and only daughter, ere the
trusty Gorion took the little one from her, to be nursed in a hut on
the other side of the lake. There," continued Mary, forgetting the
third person, "I hoped to have joined her, so soon as I was afoot
again. The faithful lavender lent me her garments, and I was already
in the boat, but the men-at-arms were rude and would have pulled down
my muffler; I raised my hand to protect myself, and it was all too
white. They had not let me stain it, because the dye would not befit a
washerwoman. So there was I dragged back to ward again, and all our
plans overthrown. And it seemed safer and meeter to put my little one
out of reach of all my foes, even if it were far away from her mother's
aching heart. Not one more embrace could I be granted, but my good
chaplain Ross--whom the saints rest--baptized her in secret, and Gorion
had set two marks on the soft flesh, which he said could never be
blotted out in after years, and then her father's clanswoman, Alison
Hepburn, undertook to carry her to France, with a letter of mine bound
up in her swathing clothes, committing her to the charge of my good
aunt, the Abbess of Soissons, in utter secrecy, until better days
should come. Alas! I thought them not so far off. I deemed that were I
once beyond the clutches of Morton, Ruthven, and the rest, the loyal
would rally once more round my standard, and my crown would be mine
own, mine enemies and those of my Church beneath my feet. Little did I
guess that my escape would only be to see them slain and routed, and
that when I threw myself on the hospitality of my cousin, her tender
mercies would prove such as I have found them. 'Libera me, Dominie,
libera me.'"

Cis began dimly to understand