At that moment Jane Humphreys was seen gently opening the door and letting in Colonel Sands, who moved as quietly as possible, to give a furtive look at the dying child.  His researches were cut short, however.  Lady Strickland, usually the gentlest of women, darted out and demanded what he was doing in her nursery.

He attempted to stammer some excuse about Princess Anne, but Lady Strickland only answered by standing pointing to the door and he was forced to retreat in a very undignified fashion.

“Who brought him?” she demanded, when the door was shut.  “Those Cockpit folk are not to come prying here, hap what may!”

Miss Humphreys had sped away for fear of questions being asked, and attention was diverted by Mrs. Royer arriving with a stout, healthy-looking young woman in a thick home-spun cloth petticoat, no stockings, and old shoes, but with a clean white cap on her head—­a tilemaker’s wife who had been captured in the village.

No sooner was the suffering, half-starved child delivered over to her than he became serene and contented.  The water-gruel regime was over, and he began to thrive from that time.  Even when later in the afternoon the King himself brought in Colonel Sands, whom in the joy of his heart he had asked to dine with him, the babe lay tranquilly on the cradle, waving his little hands and looking happy.

The intrusion seemed to have been forgotten, but that afternoon Anne, who had been sent on a message to one of the Queen’s ladies, more than suspected that she saw Jane in a deep recess of a window in confabulation with the Colonel.  And when they were alone at bed-time the girl said—­

“Is it not droll?  The Colonel cannot believe that ’tis the same child.  He has been joking and teasing me to declare that we have a dead Prince hidden somewhere, and that the King showed him the brick-bat woman’s child.”

“How can you prattle in that mischievous way—­after what Lady Strickland said, too?  You do not know what harm you may do!”

“Oh lack, it was all a jest!”

“I am not so sure that it was.”

“But you will not tell of me, dear friend, you will not.  I never saw Lady Strickland like that; I did not know she could be in such a rage.”

“No wonder, when a fellow like that came peeping and prying like a raven to see whether the poor babe was still breathing,” cried Anne indignantly.  “How could you bring him in?”

“Fellow indeed!  Why he is a colonel in the Life-guards, and the Princess’s equerry; and who has a right to know about the child if not his own sister—­or half-sister?”

“She is not a very loving sister,” replied Anne.  “You know well, Jane, how many would not be sorry to make out that it is as that man would fain have you say.”

“Well, I told him it was no such thing, and laughed the very notion to scorn.”

“It were better not to talk with him at all.”