"Yea," said Cis, "but the Queen and Sir Andrew doubted a little if he meant not threats last time we met."

"All put on-excellent dissembling to beguile the keepers. He told me all," said Antony, "and how he had to scare thee and change tone suddenly. Why, he it is who laid this same egg, and will receive it. There is a sworn band, as you know already, who will let her know our plans, and be at her commands through that means. Then, when we have done service approaching to be worthy of her, then it may be that I shall have earned at least a look or sign."

"Alas! sir," said Cicely, "how can I give you false hopes?" For her honest heart burnt to tell the poor fellow that she would in case of his success be farther removed from him than ever.

"What would be false now shall be true then. I will wring love from thee by my deeds for her whom we both alike love, and then wilt thou be mine own, my true Bride!"

By this time other guests had arrived, and the dinner was ready. Babington was, in deference to the Countess, allowed to sit next to his lady-love. She found he had been at Sheffield, and had visited Bridgefield, vainly endeavouring to obtain sanction to his addresses from her adopted parents. He saw how her eyes brightened and heard how her voice quivered with eagerness to hear of what still seemed home to her, and he was pleased to feel himself gratifying her by telling her how Mrs. Talbot looked, and how Brown Dumpling had been turned out in the Park, and Mr. Talbot had taken a new horse, which Ned had insisted on calling "Fulvius," from its colour, for Ned was such a scholar that he was to be sent to study at Cambridge. Then he would have wandered off to little Lady Arbell's being put under Master Sniggius's tuition, but Cicely would bring him back to Bridgefield, and to Ned's brothers.

No, the boasted expedition to Spain had not begun yet. Sir Francis Drake was lingering about Plymouth, digging a ditch, it was said, to bring water from Dartmoor. He would never get license to attack King Philip on his own sh.o.r.es. The Queen knew better than to give it. Humfrey and Diccon would get no better sport than robbing a ship or two on the way to the Netherlands. Antony, for his part, could not see that piracy on the high seas was fit work for a gentleman.

"A gentleman loves to serve his queen and country in all places," said Cicely.

"Ah!" said Antony, with a long breath, as though making a discovery, "sits the wind in that quarter?"

"Antony," exclaimed she, in her eagerness calling him by the familiar name of childhood, "you are in error. I declare most solemnly that it is quite another matter that stands in your way."

"And you will not tell me wherefore you are thus cruel?"

"I cannot, sir. You will understand in time that what you call cruelty is true kindness."

This was the gist of the interview. All the rest only repeated it in one form or another; and when Cis returned, it was with a saddened heart, for she could not but perceive that Antony was well-nigh crazed, not so much with love of her, as with the contemplation of the wrongs of the Church and the Queen, whom he regarded with equally pa.s.sionate devotion, and with burning zeal and indignation to avenge their sufferings, and restore them to their pristine glory. He did, indeed, love her, as he professed to have done from infancy, but as if she were to be his own personal portion of the reward. Indeed there was magnanimity enough in the youth almost to lose the individual hope in the dazzle of the great victory for which he was willing to devote his own life and happiness in the true spirit of a crusader. Cicely did not fully or consciously realise all this, but she had such a glimpse of it as to give her a guilty feeling in concealing from him the whole truth, which would have shown how fallacious were the hopes that her mother did not scruple, for her own purposes, to encourage. Poor Cicely! she had not had royal training enough to look on all subjects as simply p.a.w.ns on the monarch's chess-board; and she was so evidently unhappy over Babington's courtship, and so little disposed to enjoy her first feminine triumph, that the Queen declared that Nature had designed her for the convent she had so narrowly missed; and, valuable as was the intelligence she had brought, she was never trusted with the contents of the correspondence. On the removal of Mary to Chartley the barrel with the false bottom came into use, but the secretaries Nau and Curll alone knew in full what was there conveyed. Little more was said to Cicely of Babington.

However, it was a relief when, before the end of this summer, Cicely heard of his marriage to a young lady selected by the Earl. She hoped it would make him forget his dangerous inclination to herself; but yet there was a little lurking vanity which believed that it had been rather a marriage for property's than for love's sake.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A LIONESS AT BAY.

It was in the middle of the summer of 1586 that Humfrey and his young brother Richard, in broad gra.s.s hats and long feathers, found themselves again in London, Diccon looking considerably taller and leaner than when he went away. For when, after many months' delay, the naval expedition had taken place, he had been laid low with fever during the attack on Florida by Sir Francis Drake's little fleet; and the return to England had been only just in time to save his life. Though Humfrey had set forth merely as a lieutenant, he had returned in command of a vessel, and stood in high repute for good discipline, readiness of resource, and personal exploits. His ship had, however, suffered so severely as to be scarcely seaworthy when the fleet arrived in Plymouth harbour; and Sir Francis, finding it necessary to put her into dock and dismiss her crew, had chosen the young Captain Talbot to ride to London with his despatches to her Majesty.

The commission might well delight the brothers, who were burning to hear of home, and to know how it fared with Cicely, having been absolutely without intelligence ever since they had sailed from Plymouth in January, since which they had plundered the Spaniard both at home and in the West Indies, but had had no letters.

They rode post into London, taking their last change of horses at Kensington, on a fine June evening, when the sun was mounting high upon the steeple of St. Paul's, and speeding through the fields in hopes of being able to reach the Strand in time for supper at Lord Shrewsbury's mansion, which, even in the absence of my Lord, was always a harbour for all of the name of Talbot. Nor, indeed, was it safe to be out after dark, for the neighbourhood of the city was full of roisterers of all sorts, if not of highwaymen and cutpurses, who might come in numbers too large even for the two young gentlemen and the two servants, who remained out of the four volunteers from Bridgefield.

They were just pa.s.sing Westminster where the Abbey, Hall, and St. Stephen's Chapel, and their precincts, stood up in their venerable but unstained beauty among the fields and fine trees, and some of the Westminster boys, flat-capped, gowned, and yellow-stockinged, ran out with the cry that always flattered Diccon, not to say Humfrey, though he tried to be superior to it, "Mariners! mariners from the Western Main! Hurrah for gallant Drake! Down with the Don!" For the tokens of the sea, in the form of clothes and weapons, were well known and highly esteemed.

Two or three gentlemen who were walking along the road turned and looked up, and the young sailors recognised in a moment a home face. There was an exclamation on either side of "Antony Babington!" and "Humfrey Talbot!" and a ready clasp of the hand in right of old companionship.

"Welcome home!" exclaimed Antony. "Is all well with you?"

"Royally well," returned Humfrey. "Know'st thou aught of our father and mother?"

"All was well with them when last I heard," said Antony.

"And Cis-my sister I mean?" said Diccon, putting, in his unconsciousness, the very question Humfrey was burning to ask.

"She is still with the Queen of Scots, at Chartley," replied Babington.

"Chartley, where is that? It is a new place for her captivity."

"'Tis a house of my Lord of Ess.e.x, not far from Lichfield," returned Antony. "They sent her thither this spring, after they had well-nigh slain her with the damp and wretched lodgings they provided at Tutbury."

"Who? Not our Cis?" asked Diccon.

"Nay," said Antony, "it hurt not her vigorous youth-but I meant the long-suffering princess."

"Hath Sir Ralf Sadler still the charge of her?" inquired Humfrey.

"No, indeed. He was too gentle a jailer for the Council. They have given her Sir Amias Paulett, a mere Puritan and Leicestrian, who is as hard as the nether millstone, and well-nigh as dull," said Babington, with a little significant chuckle, which perhaps alarmed one of his companions, a small slight man with a slight halt, clad in black like a lawyer. "Mr. Babington," he said, "pardon me for interrupting you, but we shall make Mr. Gage tarry supper for us."

"Nay, Mr. Langston," said Babington, who was in high spirits, "these are kinsmen of your own, sons of Mr. Richard Talbot of Bridgefield, to whom you have often told me you were akin."

Mr. Langston was thus compelled to come forward, shake hands with the young travellers, welcome them home, and desire to be commended to their worthy parents; and Babington, in the exuberance of his welcome, named his other two companions-Mr. Tichborne, a fine, handsome, graceful, and somewhat melancholy young man; Captain Fortescue, a bearded moustached bravo, in the height of the fashion, a long plume in his Spanish hat, and his short gray cloak glittering with silver lace. Humfrey returned their salute, but was as glad as they evidently were when they got Babington away with them, and left the brothers to pursue their way, after inviting them to come and see him at his lodgings as early as possible.

"It is before supper," said Diccon, sagely, "or I should say Master Antony had been acquainted with some good canary."

"More likely he is uplifted with some fancy of his own. It may be only with the meeting of me after our encounter," said Humfrey. "He is a brave fellow and kindly, but never did craft so want ballast as does that pate of his!"

"Humfrey," said his brother, riding nearer to him, "did he not call that fellow in black, Langston?"

"Ay, Cuthbert Langston. I have heard of him. No good comrade for his weak brain."

"Humfrey, it is so, though father would not credit me. I knew his halt and his eye-just like the venomous little snake that was the death, of poor Foster. He is the same with the witch woman Tibbott, ay, and with her with the beads and bracelets, who beset Cis and me at Buxton."

Young Diccon had proved himself on the voyage to have an unerring eye for recognition, and his brother gave a low whistle. "I fear me then Master Antony may be running himself into trouble."

"See, they turn in mounting the steps to the upper fence of yonder house with the deep carved balcony. Another has joined them! I like not his looks. He is like one of those hardened cavaliers from the Netherlands."

"Ay! who seem to have left pity and conscience behind them there," said Humfrey, looking anxiously up at the fine old gabled house with its projecting timbered front, and doubting inwardly whether it would be wise to act on his old playfellow's invitation, yet with an almost sick longing to know on what terms the youth stood with Cicely.

In another quarter of an hour they were at the gateway of Shrewsbury House, where the porter proved to be one of the Sheffield retainers, and admitted them joyfully. My Lord Earl was in Yorkshire, he said, but my Lord and Lady Talbot were at home, and would be fain to see them, and there too was Master William Cavendish.

They were handed on into the courtyard, where servants ran to take their horses, and as the news ran that Master Richard's sons had arrived from the Indies, Will Cavendish came running down the hall steps to embrace them in his glee, while Lord Talbot came to the door of the hall to welcome them. These great London houses, which had not quite lost their names of hostels or inns, did really serve as free lodgings to all members of the family who might visit town, and above all such travellers as these, bringing news of grand national achievements.

Very soon after Gilbert's accession to the heirship, quarrels had begun between his wife and her mother the Countess.

Lord Talbot had much of his father's stately grace, and his wife was a finished lady. They heartily welcomed the two lads who had grown from boys to men. My lady smilingly excused the riding-gear, and as soon as the dust of travel had been removed they were seated at the board, and called on to tell of the gallant deeds in which they had taken part, whilst they heard in exchange of Lord Leicester's doings in the Netherlands, and the splendid exploits of the Stanleys at Zutphen.

Lord Talbot promised to take Humfrey to Richmond the next day, to be presented to her Majesty, so soon as he should be equipped, so as not to lose his character of mariner, but still not to affront her sensibilities by aught of uncourtly or unstudied in his apparel.

They confirmed what Babington had said of the Queen of Scots' changes of residence and of keepers. As to Cicely, they had been lately so little at Sheffield that they had almost forgotten her, but they thought that if she were still at Chartley, there could be no objection to her brothers having an interview with her on their way home, if they chose to go out of their road for it.

Humfrey mentioned his meeting with Babington in Westminster, and Lord Talbot made some inquiries as to his companions, adding that there were strange stories and suspicions afloat, and that he feared that the young man was disaffected and was consorting with Popish recusants. Diccon's tongue was on the alert with his observation, but at a sign from his brother, who did not wish to get Babington into trouble, he was silent. Cavendish, however, laughed and said he was for ever in Mr. Secretary's house, and even had a room there.