"Good luck to a true lover!" smiled the Queen. "What! starting, silly maid? Cisses are plenty in these parts as rowan berries."
"Nay, but—" gasped Cicely, for at that moment the young man, rising from his knees, his face still shining with the water, looked up at his unsuspected spectators. An expression of astonishment and ecstasy lighted up his honest sunburnt countenance as Master Richard, who had just succeeded in dragging the portly Earl up the steep path, met his gaze. He threw up his arms, made apparently but one bound, and was kneeling at the captain's feet, embracing his knees.
"My son! Humfrey! Thyself!" cried Richard. "See! see what presence we are in."
"Your blessing, father, first," cried Humfrey, "ere I can see aught else."
And as Richard quickly and thankfully laid his hand on the brow, so much fairer than the face, and then held his son for one moment in a close embrace, with an exchange of the kiss that was not then only a foreign fashion. Queen and Earl said to one another with a sigh, that happy was the household where the son had no eyes for any save his father.
Mary, however, must have found it hard to continue her smiles when, after due but hurried obeisance to her and to his feudal chief, Humfrey turned to the little figure beside her, all smiling with startled shyness, and in one moment seemed to swallow it up in a huge overpowering embrace, fraternal in the eyes of almost all the spectators, but not by any means so to those of Mary, especially after the name she had heard. Diccon's greeting was the next, and was not quite so visibly rapturous on the part of the elder brother, who explained that he had arrived at Sheffield yesterday, and finding no one to welcome him but little Edward, had set forth for Buxton almost with daylight, and having found himself obliged to rest his horse, he had turned aside to—-. And here he recollected just in time that Cis was in every one's eyes save his father's, his own sister, and lamely concluded "to take a draught of water," blushing under his brown skin as he spoke. Poor fellow! the Queen, even while she wished him in the farthest West Indian isle, could not help understanding that strange doubt and dread that come over the mind at the last moment before a longed-for meeting, and which had made even the bold young sailor glad to rally his hopes by this divination. Fortunately she thought only herself and one or two of the foremost had heard the name he gave, as was proved by the Earl's good-humoured laugh, as he said,
"A draught, quotha? We understand that, young sir. And who may this your true love be?"
"That I hope soon to make known to your Lordship," returned Humfrey, with a readiness which he certainly did not possess before his voyage.
The ceremony was still to be fulfilled, and the smith's wife called them to order by saying, "Good luck to the young gentleman. He is a stranger here, or he would have known he should have come up by our path! Will you try the well, your Grace?"
"Nay, nay, good woman, my time for such toys is over!" said the Queen smiling, "but moved by such an example, here are others to make the venture, Master Curll is burning for it, I see."