"And our boy Humfrey calls himself contracted to her!"
"So long as we let the secret die with us that can do her no ill. Happily the wench favours not her mother, save sometimes in a certain lordly carriage of the head and shoulders. She is like enough to some of the Scots retinue to make me think she must take her face from her father, the villain, who, someone told me, was beetle-browed and swarthy."
"Lives he still?"
"So 'tis thought, but somewhere in prison in the north. There have been no tidings of his death; but my Lady Queen, you'll remember, treats the marriage as nought, and has made offer of herself for the misfortune of the Duke of Norfolk, ay, and of this Don John, and I know not whom besides."
"She would not have done that had she known that our Cis was alive."
"Mayhap she would, mayhap not. I believe myself she would do anything short of disowning her Popery to get out of prison; but as matters stand I doubt me whether Cis—"
"The Lady Bride Hepburn," suggested Susan.
"Pshaw, poor child, I misdoubt me whether they would own her claim even to that name."
"And they might put her in prison if they did," said Susan.
"They would be sure to do so, sooner or later. Here has my lord been recounting in his trouble about my lady's fine match for her Bess, all that hath come of mating with royal blood, the very least disaster being poor Lady Mary Grey's! Kept in ward for life! It is a cruel matter. I would that I had known the cipher at first. Then she might either have been disposed of at the Queen's will, or have been sent safe to this nunnery at Soissons."