e," said Marie
de Courcelles. "This one will also pass over."

"Ah, my good Marie, never before have I felt this foreboding and
sinking of the heart. I have always hoped before, but I have exhausted
the casket of Pandora. Even hope is flown!"

Jean Kennedy tried to say something of "Darkest before dawn."

"The dawn, it may be, of the eternal day," said the Queen. "Nay, my
friends, the most welcome tidings that could greet me would be that my
weary bondage was over for ever, and that I should wreck no more
gallant hearts. What, mignonne, art thou weeping? There will be
freedom again for thee when that day comes."

"O madam, I want not freedom at such a price!" And yet Cicely had
never recovered her looks since those seventeen days at Tickhill. She
still looked white and thin, and her dark eyebrows lay in a heavy line,
seldom lifted by the merry looks and smiles that used to flash over her
face. Life had begun to press its weight upon her, and day after day,
as Humfrey watched her across the chapel, and exchanged a word or two
with her while crossing the yard, had he grieved at her altered mien;
and vexed himself with wondering whether she had after all loved
Babington, and were mourning for him.

Truly, even without the passion of love, there had been much to shock
and appal a young heart in the fate of the playfellow of her childhood,
the suitor of her youth. It was the first death among those she had
known intimately, and even her small knowledge of the cause made her
feel miserable and almost guilty, for had not poor Antony plotted for
her mother, and had not she been held out to him as a delusive
inducement? Moreover, she felt the burden of a deep, pitying love and
admiration not wholly joined with perfect trust and reliance. She had
been from the first startled by untruths and concealments. There was
mystery all round her, and the future was dark. There were terrible
forebodings for her mother; and if she looked beyond for herself, only
uncertainty and fear of being commanded to follow Marie de Courcelles
to a foreign court, perhaps to a convent; while she yearned with an
almost sick longing for home and kind Mrs. Talbot's motherly tenderness
and trustworthiness, and the very renunciation of Humfrey that she had
spoken so easily, had made her aware of his full worth, and wakened in
her a longing for the right to rest on his stout arm and faithful
heart. To look across at him and know him near ofte