"Your Majesty would have said so truly," said Diccon; "for as I sat at evening, striving hard to make her give over these fantastic notions and consult her true interest, behold she gave a cry—''Tis his foot!' Yea, and verily there was Humfrey, brown as a berry, having been so far with his mate as to the very mouth of the River Plate. He had, indeed, lost his Ark of Fortune, but he has come home with a carrack that quadruples her burthen, and with a thousand bars of silver in her hold. And then, madam, the joy, the kisses, the embraces, and even more—the look of perfect content, and peace, and trust, were enough to make a bachelor long for a wife."
"Long to be a fool!" broke out the Queen sharply. "Look you, lad: there may be such couples as this Humfrey and—what call you her?—here and there."
"My father and mother are such."
"Yea, saucy cockerel as you are; but for one such, there are a hundred others who fret the yoke, and long to be free! Ay, and this brother of thine, what hath he got with this wife of his but banishment and dread of his own land?"
"Even so, madam; but they still count all they either could have had or hoped for, nought in comparison with their love to one another."
"After ten years! Ha! They are no subjects for this real world of ours; are they not rather swains in my poor Philip Sidney's Arcadia? Ho, no; 'twere pity to meddle with them. Leave them to their Dutch household and their carracks. Let them keep their own secret; I'll meddle in the matter no more."
And so, though after Elizabeth's death and James's accession, Sir Humfrey and Lady Talbot gladdened the eyes of the loving and venerable pair at Bridgefield, the Princess Bride of Scotland still remained in happy obscurity, "Unknown to History."
THE END.