ining Cicely on what
she had gathered from Humfrey. This was in fact nothing, for he had
been on his guard against either telling or hearing anything
inconsistent with loyalty to the English Queen, and thus had avoided
conversation on these subjects.

Nor did the Queen communicate much. Cicely never understood clearly
what she dreaded, what she expected to be found among her papers, or
what had been in the packet thrown into the well. The girl did not
dare to ask direct questions, and the Queen always turned off indirect
inquiries, or else assured her that she was still a simple happy child,
and that it was better for her own sake that she should know nothing,
then caressed her, and fondly pitied her for not being admitted to her
mother's confidence, but said piteously that she knew not what the
secrets of Queens and captives were, not like those of Mistress Susan
about the goose to be dressed, or the crimson hose to be knitted for a
surprise to her good husband.

But Cicely could see that she expected the worst, and believed in a set
purpose to shed her blood, and she spent much time in devotion, though
sorely distressed by the absence of all those appliances which her
Church had taught her to rest upon. And these prayers, which often
began with floods of tears, so that Cicely drew away into the window
with her distaff in order not to seem to watch them, ended with
rendering her serene and calm, with a look of high resignation, as
having offered herself as a sacrifice and martyr for her Church.

And yet was it wholly as a Roman Catholic that she had been hated,
intrigued against, and deposed in her own kingdom? Was it simply as a
Roman Catholic that she was, as she said, the subject of a more cruel
plot than that of which she was accused?

Mysterious woman that she was, she was never more mysterious than to
her daughter in those seventeen days that they were shut up together!
It did not so much strike Cicely at the time, when she was carried
along with all her mother's impulses and emotions, without reflecting
on them, but when in after times she thought over all that then had
passed, she felt how little she had understood.

They suffered a good deal from the heat and closeness of the rooms, for
Mary was like a modern Englishwoman in her craving for free air, and
these were the dog-days. They had contrived by the help of a diamond
that the Queen carried about with her, after the fashion of the time,
to extr