care of poor Barbara!"

"Madam, there must be no private messages," said Paulett.

"I send no messages save what you yourself may hear, sir," replied the
Queen. "My greetings to my faithful servants, and my entreaty that all
care and tenderness may be shown to Mrs. Curll."

"I will bear them, madam," said the knight, "and so I commend you to
God's keeping, praying that He may send you repentance. Believe me,
madam, I am sorry that this has been put upon me."

To this Mary only replied by a gesture of dismissal. The three
gentlemen drew back, a key grated in the lock, and the mother and
daughter were left alone.

To Cicely it was a terrible hopeless sound, and even to her mother it
was a lower depth of wretchedness. She had been practically a captive
for nearly twenty years. She had been insulted, watched, guarded,
coerced, but never in this manner locked up before.

She clasped her hands together, dropped on her knees at the table that
stood by her, and hid her face. So she continued till she was roused
by the sound of Cicely's sobs. Frightened and oppressed, and new to
all terror and sorrow, the girl had followed her example in kneeling,
but the very attempt to pray brought on a fit of weeping, and the
endeavour to restrain what might disturb the Queen only rendered the
sobs more choking and strangling, till at last Mary heard, and coming
towards her, sat down on the floor, gathered her into her arms, and
kissing her forehead, said, "Poor bairnie, and did she weep for her
mother? Have the sorrows of her house come on her?"

"O mother, I could not help it! I meant to have comforted you," said
Cicely, between her sobs.

"And so thou dost, my child. Unwittingly they have left me that which
was most precious to me."

There was consolation in the fondness of the loving embrace, at least
to such sorrows as those of the maiden; and Queen Mary had an
inalienable power of charming the will and affections of those in
contact with her, so that insensibly there came into Cicely's heart a
sense that, so far from weeping, she should rejoice at being the one
creature left to console her mother.

"And," she said by and by, looking up with a smile, "they must go to
the bottom of the old well to find anything."

"Hush, lassie. Never speak above thy breath in a prison till thou
know'st whether walls have ears. And, apropos, let us examine what
sort of a prison they have given us this time."

So saying Mary rose