'I rejoice that your voices ring true and that your hearts are in the right place, while your intellects recognize the enormity of the affliction into which this country would be plunged if a woman steeped in Papistry and so benighted, so bigoted that Edward, our king, tried in vain to win her to the true Faith, were to ascend the throne. Let me tell you that there are good and great statesmen round our king who will do all in their power to secure the succession to a true Protestant who, like yourselves, abhors Papistry and all its attendant evils.' After saying that, being thoroughly exhausted, he sat down.

And the people cried with one voice, 'A Protestant, and none but a Protestant, shall rule over us!'

Jack Fish and other countrymen then made short emphatic speeches, which so stirred the audience that they began to grow overpoweringly noisy, whereupon my men and Lady Caroline's made a way through the people for us, and we retired into the castle, leaving the gentlemen to close the meeting in the best way they could.

I did not see them return to the castle that night, for Lady Caroline would have me go to bed at once, declaring that I looked thoroughly worn out. I therefore went to my room, and suffered Betsy to take off my fine clothes and replace them by a warm gown, after which I sent her away, and sat by the lancet-shaped window looking out into the night, listening to the distant shoutings of the people and watching their lanterns and torches presently leaving the courtyard and glimmering away into the darkness beyond. They were going to their homes, carrying with them big thoughts, pregnant with meaning, given to them chiefly by Sir Hubert Blair; and soon I, too, should be gone to a very different sphere, near London, taking with me also new ideas imparted by him and Lady Caroline, and what would be the end of it all?

I could not tell. But it seemed to me that I had left my childhood behind me in my father's house, with Hal and Jack, and was entering into the new untried life of a woman, in times which bid fair to be troubled and tempestuous, and I felt afraid.

But just then, from the garden below my window, proceeded the sound of a sweet-toned lute, played so exquisitely that I could have wept for joy.

I leaned out of a window and looked down upon the player, and he looked up to me, the while he played even more beautifully than before. And I felt soothed and comforted, for, whatever had happened and was going to happen, there was Sir Hubert Blair, and he was my friend and I his, and I prayed in my heart for him—for him and for myself—that God would bless us, and bless our friendship, so that nothing but good might come of it. When he had gone away, which he did in a few minutes after playing for me that lovely strain, I went to bed; and the feeling of happiness which that music had brought to me was such that I fell asleep the moment my head touched the pillow, and knew no more till it was time to rise the next morning.

CHAPTER VII
Sir Hubert and I

What a wonderful thing is love—the love, I mean, of man for woman and woman for man! It is so bewitching and alluring, yet withal so tyrannical and imperious. No wonder that it has been the theme of poets and historians in all times, and will be as long as the world remains. Love enters so largely into our lives, for weal or woe, that to ignore it is to wilfully shut our eyes to facts and blind ourselves to one of the greatest realities of existence, which must be reckoned with and allowed for, whatever else is omitted. The story of the love of man and woman commenced in the Garden of Eden, runs all through the pages of history, sacred and profane, and is to be seen in all the haunts of men. It is only the very young into whose thoughts and calculations it does not enter, until they wake up suddenly to find themselves its subjects.