“Thank Heaven! it is gone,” ejaculated Jane, as if relieved from a weight of anxiety.
“What is gone, dear sister?” inquired Lady Herbert, affectionately.
“Do not ask me,” replied Jane, in a tone calculated to put an end to further conversation on the subject. “What I have seen and heard must for ever remain locked in my own bosom.”
“I begin to think a spirit must have appeared to your majesty,” observed Lady Herbert, whose curiosity was violently excited, and who, in common with most persons of the period, entertained a firm belief in supernatural appearances. “Every chamber in the Tower is said to be haunted,—and why not this ghostly chapel, which looks as if it were peopled with phantoms? I am quite sorry I proposed to visit it. But if I am ever caught in it again, except in broad daylight, and then only with sufficient attendance, your majesty shall have free leave to send me to keep company with the invisible world for the future. I would give something to know what you have seen. Perhaps it was the ghost of Anne Boleyn, who is known to walk;—or the guilty Catherine Howard,—or the old Countess of Salisbury. Do tell me which it was—and whether the spectre carried its head under its arm?”
“No more of this,” said Jane, authoritatively. “Come with me to the altar.”
“Your majesty is not going to remain here?” cried Lady Hastings. “I declare positively I dare not stop.”
“I will not detain you longer than will suffice to offer a single prayer to Heaven,” rejoined the Queen. “Be not afraid. Nothing will injure, or affright you.”
“I am by no means sure of that,” replied Lady Hastings. “And now I really do think I see something.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Jane, starting. “Where?”
“Behind the farthest pillar on the right,” replied Lady Hastings, pointing towards it. “It looks like a man muffled in a cloak. There!—it moves.”