but if Mr. and Mrs. Curll, and
the fair Mistress Cicely, will do me the honour to dine with me
to-morrow in the hall, we may bring about the auspicious meeting my
Lady desires."

Cicely's first impulse had been to pout and say she wanted none of Mr.
Babington's tokens, nor his company; but her mother's eye held her
back, and besides any sort of change of scene, or any new face, could
not but be delightful, so there was a certain leap of the young heart
when the invitation was accepted for her; and she let Sir Ralf put the
token into her hand, and a choice one it was. Everybody pressed to
look at it, while she stood blushing, coy and unwilling to display the
small egg-shaped watch of the kind recently invented at Nuremberg. Sir
Ralf observed that the young lady showed a comely shamefast
maidenliness, and therewith bowed himself out of the room.

Cicely laughed with impatient scorn. "Well spoken, reverend seignior,"
she said, as she found herself alone with the Queen. "I wish my Lady
Countess would leave me alone. I am none of hers."

"Nay, mademoiselle, be not thus disdainful," said the Queen, in a gay
tone of banter; "give me here this poor token that thou dost so
despise, when many a maiden would be distraught with delight and
gratitude. Let me see it, I say."

And as Cicely, restraining with difficulty an impatient, uncourtly
gesture, placed the watch in her hand, her delicate deft fingers opened
the case, disregarding both the face and the place for inserting the
key; but dealing with a spring, which revealed that the case was
double, and that between the two thin plates of silver which formed it,
was inserted a tiny piece of the thinnest paper, written from corner to
corner with the smallest characters in cipher. Mary laughed joyously
and triumphantly as she held it up. "There, mignonne! What sayest
thou to thy token now? This is the first secret news I have had from
the outer world since we came to this weary Tutbury. And oh! the
exquisite jest that my Lady and Sir Ralf Sadler should be the bearers!
I always knew some good would come of that suitor of thine! Thou must
not flout him, my fair lady, nor scowl at him so with thy beetle brows."

"It seems but hard to lure him on with false hopes," said Cicely,
gravely.

"Hoots, lassie," as Dame Jean would say, "'tis but joy and delight to
men to be thus tickled. 'Tis the greatest kindness we can do them thus
to amuse them," said Mary, drawing up her