“True,” said Ralph. Clarice was sobbing softly, and Lady Margaret went on, half to Ralph and half to herself:—
“It was just two years ago yesterday when Lady Anne set out for London to be crowned. I never saw the Thames so brilliant. Every boat was decked with flags and streamers, edged with tiny bells that swung and tinkled in the breeze. The boats were so close together that it was hard to clear a way for the lord mayor’s barge. All the greatest men of London were with him. They wore scarlet gowns and heavy golden chains. On one side of the lord mayor was a boat full of young men who had sworn to defend Queen Anne to the death. Just ahead was a barge loaded with cannon, and their mouths pointed in every direction that the wind blows. There was a great dragon, too, so cunningly devised that it would twist and turn one way and then another, and wherever it turned, it spit red fire and green and blue into the river. There was another boat full of the fairest maidens in London town, and they all sang songs in praise of the Queen.”
“They say that Queen Anne, too, could make songs,” said Ralph, “and that she made one in prison that begins:—
‘Oh, Death, rock me asleep.
Bring on my quiet rest.’”
“When Anne Boleyn went to France with the sister of King Henry, she was a merry, innocent child. At his door lies the sin of whatever of wrong she has done,” said Lady Margaret solemnly, half turning away from Clarice and her brother and looking absently out of the open window. The lawn lay before her, fresh and green. Here and there were daisies, gleaming in the May sunshine. “I know the very place,” said she with a shudder. “It is the green within the Tower. The grass is fresh and bright there, too, but the daisies will be red to-day with the blood of our own crowned queen. It is terrible to think of the daisies.”
“Pretty daisies,” said a clear, childish voice under the window.
“Let us go out on the lawn,” said Clarice, “it stifles me here.”
“Remember,” bade Lady Margaret hastily, “to say ‘Lady,’ not ‘Princess.’”
The young man fell upon one knee before a tiny maiden, not yet three years old. The child gravely extended her hand for him to kiss. He kissed it and said:—