These things coming to the ears of Queen Elizabeth, Her Majesty remarks to her prime minister: “Burleigh, this Sir Guy Chester is the grandest thief of us all. He has stole that minx of Alva, and he and the girl have [[270]]got together and robbed her father, the poor old Duke.
“They took Your Majesty as precedent,” murmurs Burleigh. “Dost remember the eight hundred thousand crowns?”
“Yea, in God’s truth I do! But this Knight of mine, Chester, is lost to me as a fighting man if his fortune is a fifth what they say it is, and his bride’s loveliness is a tenth what rumor gives to her. Bring the wench to me. I would lay eyes upon this Spanish beauty.”
“In truth,” answers Cecil, who has seen and wondered at Hermoine’s loveliness, “Lady Chester is the most beautiful woman on earth—saving Your Majesty.”
“Out upon your cozening courtier’s tongue—that ‘saving your majesty’ was an afterthought,” laughs Elizabeth. “But bring the wench with you, I believe you’re half in love with her yourself—you old philanderer—bring me this minx of Alva, quick!”
So Sir Guy Chester, coming with his bride to court, Hermoine, by the graces of her mind, which are enchanting, and by her beauty, which is grand and winning, sends Shene and Westminster wild with admiration.
Looking on this, Queen Bess remarks sadly: “Good fortune has made this Chester a carpet knight; he now eats with that Italian abomination called a fork. Still, he has an eye for treasure; his lady’s diamonds are finer than my own. Perchance he may make a good Lord of the Treasury, for he’ll do no more fighting—unless he is a fool.”
Elizabeth’s guess is true, Chester buying great properties round London, settles down in almost princely state with his fair bride to contented happiness; though some ten years afterwards he buckles on his sword, as every true Englishman did, and fitting out at his own expense six stout vessels, the smallest of which is the old Dover Lass, which Dalton commands now, he takes his station in the channel, under my Lord Howard of Effingham, to battle against the great Armada Philip of Spain has sent against the liberties of his country.
That glorious victory is the last sea fight of the “First of the English.” From that time he lives most of the year amid the mild climate of the Kentish coast, which pleases best his Spanish bride, who remembers [[271]]the soft breezes of her native land. Here, to the end of her long and happy life, she reigns bride of her husband’s heart and mistress of his soul.
Their one sorrow is that no son comes to inherit their great estates, but they have a daughter, brunette-like as her mother, with Hermoine’s ivory skin and glorious, Madonna eyes, and she marries into a great English family, bringing to it a dower of lands that now makes it one of the grandest and richest of England’s ducal houses.