ares to perform an office that
might possibly be construed as treasonable. In spite of the
preparation which he had already received through Colet's
communications, the minister's wonder was extreme. "Daughter to the
Queen of Scots, say you, sir! Yonder modest, shamefast maiden, of
such seemly carriage and gentle speech?"

Richard smiled and said--"My good friend, had you seen that poor
lady--to whom God be merciful--as I have done, you would know that what
is sweetest in our Cicely's outward woman is derived from her; for the
inner graces, I cannot but trace them to mine own good wife."

Mr. Heatherthwayte seemed at first hardly to hear him, so overpowered
was he with the notion that the daughter of her, whom he was in the
habit of classing with Athaliah and Herodias, was in his house, resting
on the innocent pillow of Oil-of-Gladness. He made his guest recount
to him the steps by which the discovery had been made, and at last
seemed to embrace the idea. Then he asked whether Master Talbot were
about to carry the young lady to the protection of her brother in
Scotland; and when the answer was that it might be poor protection even
if conferred, and that by all accounts the Court of Scotland was by no
means a place in which to leave a lonely damsel with no faithful
guardian, the minister asked--

"How then will you bestow the maiden?"

"In that, sir, I came to ask you to aid me. My son Humfrey is
following on our steps, leaving Fotheringhay so soon as his charge
there is ended; and I ask of you to wed him to the maid, whom we will
then take to Holland, when he will take service with the States."

The amazement of the clergyman was redoubled, and he began at first to
plead with Richard that a perilous overleaping ambition was leading him
thus to mate his son with an evil, though a royal, race.

At this Richard smiled and shook his head, pointing out that the very
last thing any of them desired was that Cicely's birth should be known;
and that even if it were, her mother's marriage was very questionable.
It was no ambition, he said, that actuated his son, "But you saw
yourself how, nineteen years ago, the little lad welcomed her as his
little sister come back to him. That love hath grown up with him.
When, at fifteen years old, he learnt that she was a nameless stranger,
his first cry was that he would wed her and give her his name. Never
hath his love faltered; and even when this misfortune of her rank was