ame
Susan was the most dejected of those at Buxton. The captive Queen had
her hopes of freedom and her newly found daughter, who was as yet only
a pleasure, and not an encumbrance to her, the Earl had been assured
that his wife's slanders had been forgotten. He was secure of his
sovereign's favour, and permitted to see the term of his weary
jailorship, and thus there was an unusual liveliness and cheerfulness
about the whole sojourn at Buxton, where, indeed, there was always more
or less of a holiday time.

To Cis herself, her nights were like a perpetual fairy tale, and so
indeed were all times when she was alone with the initiated, who were
indeed all those original members of her mother's suite who had known
of her birth at Lochleven, people who had kept too many perilous
secrets not to be safely entrusted with this one, and whose finished
habits of caution, in a moment, on the approach of a stranger, would
change their manner from the deferential courtesy due to their
princess, to the good-natured civility of court ladies to little Cicely
Talbot.

Dame Susan had been gratified at first by the young girl's sincere
assurances of unchanging affection and allegiance, and, in truth, Cis
had clung the most to her with the confidence of a whole life's
danghterhood, but as the days went on, and every caress and token of
affection imaginable was lavished upon the maiden, every splendid
augury held out to her of the future, and every story of the past
detailed the charms of Mary's court life in France, seen through the
vista of nearly twenty sadly contrasted years, it was in the very
nature of things that Cis should regard the time spent perforce with
Mistress Talbot much as a petted child views its return to the strict
nurse or governess from the delights of the drawing-room. She liked to
dazzle the homely housewife with the wonderful tales of French
gaieties, or the splendid castles in the air she had heard in the
Queen's rooms, but she resented the doubt and disapproval they
sometimes excited; she was petulant and fractious at any exercise of
authority from her foster-mother, and once or twice went near to betray
herself by lapsing into a tone towards her which would have brought
down severe personal chastisement on any real daughter even of
seventeen. It was well that the Countess and her sharp-eyed daughter
Mary were out of sight, as the sight of such "cockering of a malapert
maiden" would have led to interference