'And Ambrose?' Lucy asked. 'You have comfort in him?'
'Yes,' Mary said. 'Yes, but, dear heart, the vanished days of childhood return not. Ambrose is old for his sixteen years; and, although dear, dear as ever, I am prone to look back on those days at Ford Manor, when he was mine, all mine, before the severance from me changed him.'
'Sure he is not a Papist now?' Lucy said. 'I trust not.'
'Nay, he is not professedly a Papist, but the teaching of those four years sowed seed. Yet he loves me, and is a dutiful son to me, and to his—his new father. I ought to be satisfied.'
Little Philip now turned in his cradle, awoke by the entrance of the two brothers and Ambrose, who had been to the stables to see that the grooms and horses were well cared for.
Lucy raised Philip in her arms, and Mary said,—
'Ay! give him to me, sweet boy. See, Ambrose, here is your cousin; nay, I might say your brother, for it is a double tie between you.'
The tall stripling looked down on the little morsel of humanity with a puzzled expression.
'He is very small, methinks,' he said.
This roused Lucy's maternal vanity.