"She knows! she knows! I answer for her with my life," said Antony.

"Let her then swear to utter no word of what she has seen save to the Queen," said Langston, and Cicely detected a glitter in that pale eye, and with a horrified leap of thought, recollected how easy it would be to drag her away into one of those black pools, beyond all ken.

"Oh save me, Antony!" she cried clinging to his arm.

"No one shall touch you. I will guard you with my life!" exclaimed the impulsive young man, feeling for the sword that was not there.

"Who spoke of hurting the foolish wench?" growled Savage; but Tichborne said, "No one would hurt you, madam; but it is due to us all that you should give us your word of honour not to disclose what has pa.s.sed, save to our only true mistress."

"Oh yes! yes!" cried Cicely hastily, scarcely knowing what pa.s.sed her lips, and only anxious to escape from that gleaming eye of Langston, which had twice before filled her with a nameless sense of the necessity of terrified obedience. "Oh! let me go. I hear my father's voice."

She sprang forward with a cry between joy and terror, and darted up to Richard Talbot, while Savage, the man who looked most entirely unlike a disguised gentleman, stepped forward, and in a rough, north country dialect, averred that the young gentlewoman had lost her way.

"Poor maid," said kind Richard, gathering the two trembling little hands into one of his own broad ones. "How was it? Thanks, good fellow," and he dropped a broad piece into Savage's palm; "thou hast done good service. What, Cis, child, art quaking?"

"Hast seen any hobgoblins, Cis?" said Diccon, at her other side. "I'm sure I heard them laugh."

"Whist, d.i.c.k," said his father, putting a strong arm round the girl's waist. "See, my wench, yonder is the goodly light of day. We shall soon be there."

With all his fatherly kindness, he helped the agitated girl up the remaining ascent, as the lovely piece of blue sky between the retreating rocks grew wider, and the archway higher above them. Cis felt that infinite repose and reliance that none else could give, yet the repose was disturbed by the pang of recollection that the secret laid on her was their first severance. It was unjust to his kindness; strange, doubtful, nay grisly, to her foreboding mind, and she shivered alike from that and the chill of the damp cavern, and then he drew her cloak more closely about her, and halted to ask for the flask of wine which one of the adventurous spirits had brought, that Queen Elizabeth's health might be drunk by her true subjects in the bowels of the earth. The wine was, of course, exhausted; but Dr. Jones bustled forward with some cordial waters which he had provided in case of anyone being struck with the chill of the cave, and Cicely was made to swallow some.

By this time she had been missed, and the little party were met by some servants sent by the Earl at the instance of the much-alarmed Queen to inquire for her. A little farther on came Mistress Talbot, in much anxiety and distress, though as Diccon ran forward to meet her, and she saw Cicely on her husband's arm, she resumed her calm and staid demeanour, and when a.s.sured that the maiden had suffered no damage, she made no special demonstrations of joy or affection. Indeed, such would have been deemed unbecoming in the presence of strangers, and disrespectful to the Queen and the Earl, who were not far off.

Mary, on the other hand, started up, held out her arms, received the truant with such vehement kisses, as might almost have betrayed their real relationship, and then reproached her, with all sorts of endearing terms, for having so terrified them all; nor would she let the girl go from her side, and kept her hand in her own, Diccon meanwhile had succeeded in securing his father's attention, which had been wholly given to Cicely till she was placed in the women's hands. "Father," he said, "I wish that one of the knaves with the torches who found our Cis was the woman with the beads and bracelets, ay, and Tibbott, too."

"Belike, belike, my son," said Richard. "There are folk who can take as many forms as a barnacle goose. Keep thou a sharp eye as the fellows pa.s.s out, and pull me by the cloak if thou seest him."

Of course he was not seen, and Richard, who was growing more and more cautious about bringing vague or half-proved suspicions before his Lord, decided to be silent and to watch, though he sighed to his wife that the poor child would soon be in the web.

Cis had not failed to recognise that same ident.i.ty, and to feel a half-realised conviction that the Queen had not chosen to confide to her that the two female disguises both belonged to Langston. Yet the contrast between Mary's endearments and the restrained manner of Susan so impelled her towards the veritable mother, that the compunction as to the concealment she had at first experienced pa.s.sed away, and her heart felt that its obligations were towards her veritable and most loving parent. She told the Queen the whole story at night, to Mary's great delight. She said she was sure her little one had something on her mind, she had so little to say of her adventure, and the next day a little privy council was contrived, in which Cicely was summoned again to tell her tale. The ladies declared they had always hoped much from their darling page, in whom they had kept up the true faith, but Sir Andrew Melville shook his head and said: "I'd misdoot ony plot where the little finger of him was. What garred the silly loon call in the young leddy ere he kenned whether she wad keep counsel?"

CHAPTER XVII.

THE EBBING WELL.

Cicely's thirst for adventures had received a check, but the Queen, being particularly well and in good spirits, and trusting that this would be her last visit to Buxton, was inclined to enterprise, and there were long rides and hawking expeditions on the moors.

The last of these, ere leaving Buxton, brought the party to the hamlet of Barton Clough, where a loose horseshoe of the Earl's caused a halt at a little wayside smithy. Mary, always friendly and free-spoken, asked for a draught of water, and entered into conversation with the smith's rosy-cheeked wife who brought it to her, and said it was sure to be good and pure for the stream came from the Ebbing and Flowing Well, and she pointed up a steep path. Then, on a further question, she proceeded, "Has her ladyship never heard of the Ebbing Well that shows whether true love is soothfast?"

"How so?" asked the Queen. "How precious such a test might be. It would save many a maiden a broken heart, only that the poor fools would ne'er trust it."

"I have heard of it," said the Earl, "and Dr. Jones would demonstrate to your Grace that it is but a superst.i.tion of the vulgar regarding a natural phenomenon."

"Yea, my Lord," said the smith, looking up from the horse's foot; "'tis the trade of yonder philosophers to gainsay whatever honest folk believed before them. They'll deny next that hens lay eggs, or blight rots wheat. My good wife speaks but plain truth, and we have seen it o'er and o'er again."

"What have you seen, good man?" asked Mary eagerly, and ready answer was made by the couple, who had acquired some cultivation of speech and manners by their wayside occupation, and likewise as cicerones to the spring.

"Seen, quoth the lady?" said the smith. "Why, he that is a true man and hath a true maid can quaff a draught as deep as his gullet can hold-or she that is true and hath a true love-but let one who hath a flaw in the metal, on the one side or t'other, stoop to drink, and the water shrinks away so as there's not the moistening of a lip."

"Ay: the ladies may laugh," added his wife, "but 'tis soothfast for all that."

"Hast proved it, good dame?" asked the Queen archly, for the pair were still young and well-looking enough to be jested with.

"Ay! have we not, madam?" said the dame. "Was not my man yonder, Rob, the tinker's son, whom my father and brethren, the smiths down yonder at Buxton, thought but scorn of, but we'd taken a sup together at the Ebbing Well, and it played neither of us false, so we held out against 'em all, and when they saw there was no help for it, they gave Bob the second best anvil and bellows for my portion, and here we be."

"Living witnesses to the Well," said the Queen merrily. "How say you, my Lord? I would fain see this marvel. Master Curll, will you try the venture?"

"I fear it not, madam," said the secretary, looking at the blushing Barbara.

Objections did not fail to arise from the Earl as to the difficulties of the path and the lateness of the hour but Bob Smith, perhaps wilfully, discovered another of my Lord's horseshoes to be in a perilous state, and his good wife, Dame Emmott, offered to conduct the ladies by so good a path that they might think themselves on the Queen's Walk at Buxton itself.

Lord Shrewsbury, finding himself a prisoner, was obliged to yield compliance, and leaving Sir Andrew Melville, with the grooms and falconers, in charge of the horses, the Queen, the Earl, Cicely, Mary Seaton, Barbara Mowbray, the two secretaries, and Richard Talbot and young Diccon, started on the walk, together with Dr. Bourgoin, her physician, who was eager to investigate the curiosity, and make it a subject of debate with Dr. Jones.

The path was a beautiful one, through rocks and brushwood, mountain ash bushes showing their coral berries amid their feathery leaves, golden and white stars of stonecrop studding every coign of vantage, and in more level spots the waxy bell-heather beginning to come into blossom. Still it was rather over praise to call it as smooth as the carefully-levelled and much-trodden Queen's path at Buxton, considering that it ascended steeply all the way, and made the solemn, much-enduring Earl pant for breath; but the Queen, her rheumatics for the time entirely in abeyance, bounded on with the mountain step learned in early childhood, and closely followed the brisk Emmott. The last ascent was a steep pull, taking away the disposition to speak, and at its summit Mary stood still holding out one hand, with a finger of the other on her lips as a sign of silence to the rest of the suite and to Emmott, who stood flushed and angered; for what she esteemed her lawful province seemed to have been invaded from the other side of the country.

They were on the side of the descent from the moorlands connected with the Peak, on a small esplanade in the midst of which lay a deep clear pool, with nine small springs or fountains discharging themselves, under fern and wild rose or honeysuckle, into its basin. Steps bad been cut in the rock leading to the verge of the pool, and on the lowest of these, with his back to the new-comers, was kneeling a young man, his brown head bare, his short cloak laid aside, so that his well-knit form could be seen; the sword and spurs that clanked against the rock, as well as the whole fashion and texture of his riding-dress, showing him to be a gentleman.

"We shall see the venture made," whispered Mary to her daughter, who, in virtue of youth and lightness of foot, had kept close behind her. Grasping the girl's arm and smiling, she heard the young man's voice cry aloud to the echoes of the rock, "Cis!" then stoop forward and plunge face and head into the clear translucent water.

"Good luck to a true lover!" smiled the Queen. "What! starting, silly maid? Cisses are plenty in these parts as rowan berries."

"Nay, but-" gasped Cicely, for at that moment the young man, rising from his knees, his face still shining with the water, looked up at his unsuspected spectators. An expression of astonishment and ecstasy lighted up his honest sunburnt countenance as Master Richard, who had just succeeded in dragging the portly Earl up the steep path, met his gaze. He threw up his arms, made apparently but one bound, and was kneeling at the captain's feet, embracing his knees.

"My son! Humfrey! Thyself!" cried Richard. "See! see what presence we are in."

"Your blessing, father, first," cried Humfrey, "ere I can see aught else."

And as Richard quickly and thankfully laid his hand on the brow, so much fairer than the face, and then held his son for one moment in a close embrace, with an exchange of the kiss that was not then only a foreign fashion. Queen and Earl said to one another with a sigh, that happy was the household where the son had no eyes for any save his father.

Mary, however, must have found it hard to continue her smiles when, after due but hurried obeisance to her and to his feudal chief, Humfrey turned to the little figure beside her, all smiling with startled shyness, and in one moment seemed to swallow it up in a huge overpowering embrace, fraternal in the eyes of almost all the spectators, but not by any means so to those of Mary, especially after the name she had heard. Diccon's greeting was the next, and was not quite so visibly rapturous on the part of the elder brother, who explained that he had arrived at Sheffield yesterday, and finding no one to welcome him but little Edward, had set forth for Buxton almost with daylight, and having found himself obliged to rest his horse, he had turned aside to--. And here he recollected just in time that Cis was in every one's eyes save his father's, his own sister, and lamely concluded "to take a draught of water," blushing under his brown skin as he spoke. Poor fellow! the Queen, even while she wished him in the farthest West Indian isle, could not help understanding that strange doubt and dread that come over the mind at the last moment before a longed-for meeting, and which had made even the bold young sailor glad to rally his hopes by this divination. Fortunately she thought only herself and one or two of the foremost had heard the name he gave, as was proved by the Earl's good-humoured laugh, as he said,

"A draught, quotha? We understand that, young sir. And who may this your true love be?"

"That I hope soon to make known to your Lordship," returned Humfrey, with a readiness which he certainly did not possess before his voyage.

The ceremony was still to be fulfilled, and the smith's wife called them to order by saying, "Good luck to the young gentleman. He is a stranger here, or he would have known he should have come up by our path! Will you try the well, your Grace?"

"Nay, nay, good woman, my time for such toys is over!" said the Queen smiling, "but moved by such an example, here are others to make the venture, Master Curll is burning for it, I see."

"I fear no such trial, an't please your Grace," said Curll, bowing, with a bright defiance of the water, and exchanging a confident smile with the blushing Mistress Barbara-then kneeling by the well, and uttering her name aloud ere stooping to drink. He too succeeded in obtaining a full draught, and came up triumphantly.

"The water is a flatterer!" said the Earl. "It favours all."

The French secretary, Monsieur Nau, here came forward and took his place on the steps. No one heard, but every one knew the word he spoke was "Bessie," for Elizabeth Pierrepoint had long been the object of his affections. No doubt he hoped that he should obtain some encouragement from the water, even while he gave a little laugh of affected incredulity as though only complying with a form to amuse the Queen. Down he went on his knees, bending over the pool, when behold he could not reach it! The streams that fed it were no longer issuing from the rock, the water was subsiding rapidly. The farther he stooped, the more it retreated, till he had almost fallen over, and the guide screamed out a note of warning, "Have a care, sir! If the water flees you, flee it will, and ye'll not mend matters by drowning yourself."