epeated it in
one form or another; and when Cis returned, it was with a saddened
heart, for she could not but perceive that Antony was well-nigh crazed,
not so much with love of her, as with the contemplation of the wrongs
of the Church and the Queen, whom he regarded with equally passionate
devotion, and with burning zeal and indignation to avenge their
sufferings, and restore them to their pristine glory. He did, indeed,
love her, as he professed to have done from infancy, but as if she were
to be his own personal portion of the reward. Indeed there was
magnanimity enough in the youth almost to lose the individual hope in
the dazzle of the great victory for which he was willing to devote his
own life and happiness in the true spirit of a crusader. Cicely did
not fully or consciously realise all this, but she had such a glimpse
of it as to give her a guilty feeling in concealing from him the whole
truth, which would have shown how fallacious were the hopes that her
mother did not scruple, for her own purposes, to encourage. Poor
Cicely! she had not had royal training enough to look on all subjects
as simply pawns on the monarch's chess-board; and she was so evidently
unhappy over Babington's courtship, and so little disposed to enjoy her
first feminine triumph, that the Queen declared that Nature had
designed her for the convent she had so narrowly missed; and, valuable
as was the intelligence she had brought, she was never trusted with the
contents of the correspondence. On the removal of Mary to Chartley the
barrel with the false bottom came into use, but the secretaries Nau and
Curll alone knew in full what was there conveyed. Little more was said
to Cicely of Babington.

However, it was a relief when, before the end of this summer, Cicely
heard of his marriage to a young lady selected by the Earl. She hoped
it would make him forget his dangerous inclination to herself; but yet
there was a little lurking vanity which believed that it had been
rather a marriage for property's than for love's sake.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A LIONESS AT BAY.

It was in the middle of the summer of 1586 that Humfrey and his young
brother Richard, in broad grass hats and long feathers, found
themselves again in London, Diccon looking considerably taller and
leaner than when he went away. For when, after many months' delay, the
naval expedition had taken place, he had been laid low with fever
during the attack on Florida by Sir