"We are much beholden for your Grace's favour," said Richard, somewhat stiffly, "but I trust never to serve any land save mine own."
"Ah! there is your fierete," cried Mary. "Happy is my sister to have subjects with such a point of honour. Happy is my child to have been bred up by such parents!"
Richard bowed. It was all a man could do at such a speech, and Mary further added, "She has told me to what bounds went your goodness to her. It is well that you acted so prudently that the children's hearts were not engaged; for, as we all know but too well royal blood should have no heart."
"I am quite aware of it, madam," returned Richard, and there for the time the conversation ended. The Queen had been most charming, full of gratitude, and perfectly reasonable in her requests, and yet there was some flaw in the gratification of both, even while neither thought the disappointment would go very hard with their son. Richard could never divest himself of the instinctive prejudice with which soft words inspire men of his nature, and Susan's maternal heart was all in revolt against the inevitable, not merely grieving over the wrench to her affections, but full of forebodings and misgivings as to the future welfare of her adopted child. Even if the brightest hopes should be fulfilled; the destiny of a Scottish princess did not seem to Southern eyes very brilliant at the best, and whether poor Bride Hepburn might be owned as a princess at all was a doubtful matter, since, if her father lived (and he had certainly been living in 1577 in Norway), both the Queen and the Scottish people would be agreed in repudiating the marriage. Any way, Susan saw every reason to fear for the happiness and the religion alike of the child to whom she had given a mother's love. Under her grave, self-contained placid demeanour, perhaps Dame Susan was the most dejected of those at Buxton. The captive Queen had her hopes of freedom and her newly found daughter, who was as yet only a pleasure, and not an encumbrance to her, the Earl had been assured that his wife's slanders had been forgotten. He was secure of his sovereign's favour, and permitted to see the term of his weary jailorship, and thus there was an unusual liveliness and cheerfulness about the whole sojourn at Buxton, where, indeed, there was always more or less of a holiday time.
To Cis herself, her nights were like a perpetual fairy tale, and so indeed were all times when she was alone with the initiated, who were indeed all those original members of her mother's suite who had known of her birth at Lochleven, people who had kept too many perilous secrets not to be safely entrusted with this one, and whose finished habits of caution, in a moment, on the approach of a stranger, would change their manner from the deferential courtesy due to their princess, to the good-natured civility of court ladies to little Cicely Talbot.
Dame Susan had been gratified at first by the young girl's sincere assurances of unchanging affection and allegiance, and, in truth, Cis had clung the most to her with the confidence of a whole life's danghterhood, but as the days went on, and every caress and token of affection imaginable was lavished upon the maiden, every splendid augury held out to her of the future, and every story of the past detailed the charms of Mary's court life in France, seen through the vista of nearly twenty sadly contrasted years, it was in the very nature of things that Cis should regard the time spent perforce with Mistress Talbot much as a petted child views its return to the strict nurse or governess from the delights of the drawing-room. She liked to dazzle the homely housewife with the wonderful tales of French gaieties, or the splendid castles in the air she had heard in the Queen's rooms, but she resented the doubt and disapproval they sometimes excited; she was petulant and fractious at any exercise of authority from her foster-mother, and once or twice went near to betray herself by lapsing into a tone towards her which would have brought down severe personal chastisement on any real daughter even of seventeen. It was well that the Countess and her sharp-eyed daughter Mary were out of sight, as the sight of such "cockering of a malapert maiden" would have led to interference that might have brought matters to extremity. Yet, with all the forbearance thus exercised, Susan could not but feel that the girl's love was being weaned from her; and, after all, how could she complain, since it was by the true mother? If only she could have hoped it was for the dear child's good, it would not have been so hard! But the trial was a bitter one, and not even her husband guessed how bitter it was.
The Queen meantime improved daily in health and vigour in the splendid summer weather. The rheumatism had quitted her, and she daily rode and played at Trowle Madame for hours after supper in the long bright July evenings. Cis, whose shoulder was quite well, played with great delight on the greensward, where one evening she made acquaintance with a young esquire and his sisters from the neighbourhood, who had come with their father to pay their respects to my Lord Earl, as the head of all Hallamshire. The Earl, though it was not quite according to the recent stricter rules, ventured to invite them to stay to sup with the household, and afterwards they came out with the rest upon the lawn.
Cis was walking between the young lad and his sister, laughing and talking with much animation, for she had not for some time enjoyed the pleasure of free intercourse with any of her fellow-denizens in the happy land of youth.
Dame Susan watched her with some uneasiness, and presently saw her taking them where she herself was privileged to go, but strangers were never permitted to approach, on the Trowle Madame sward reserved for the Queen, on which she was even now entering.
"Cicely!" she called, but the young lady either did not or would not hear, and she was obliged to walk hastily forward, meet the party, and with courteous excuses turn them back from the forbidden ground. They submitted at once, apologising, but Cis, with a red spot on her cheek, cried, "The Queen would take no offence."