n seemed her best
support, and was she to be cut off from him for ever? The devotions of
the Queen, though she had been deprived of her almoner had been much
increased of late as one preparing for death; and with them were
associated all her household of the Roman Catholic faith, leaving out
Cicely and the two Mrs. Curlls. The long oft-repeated Latin orisons,
such as the penitential Psalms, would certainly have been wearisome to
the girl, but it gave her a pang to be pointedly excluded as one who
had no part nor lot with her mother. Perhaps this was done by
calculation, in order to incline her to embrace her mother's faith; and
the time was not spent very pleasantly, as she had nothing but
needlework to occupy her, and no society save that of the sisters
Curll. Barbara's spirits were greatly depressed by the loss of her
infant and anxiety for her husband. His evidence might be life or
death to the Queen, and his betrayal of her confidence, or his being
tortured for his fidelity, were terrible alternatives for his wife's
imagination. It was hard to say whether she were more sorry or glad
when, on leaving Chartley, she was forbidden to continue her attendance
on the Queen, and set free to follow him to London. The poor lady knew
nothing, and dreaded everything. She could not help discussing her
anxieties when alone with Cicely, thus rendering perceptible more and
more of the ramifications of plot and intrigue--past and present--at
which she herself only guessed a part. Assuredly the finding herself a
princess, and sharing the captivity of a queen, had not proved so like
a chapter of the Morte d'Arthur as it had seemed to Cicely at Buxton.

It was as unlike as was riding a white palfrey through a forest, guided
by knights in armour, to the being packed with all the ladies into a
heavy jolting conveyance, guarded before and behind by armed servants
and yeomen, among whom Humfrey's form could only now and then be
detected.

The Queen had chosen her seat where she could best look out from the
scant amount of window. She gazed at the harvest-fields full of
sheaves, the orchards laden with ruddy apples, the trees assuming their
autumn tints, with lingering eyes, as of one who foreboded that these
sights of earth were passing from her.

Two nights were spent on the road, one at Leicester; and on the fourth
day, the captain in charge of the castle for the governor Sir William
Fitzwilliam, who had come to escort and r