There followed a pause, during which could be heard the murmur of the waiting throng and the autumnal rustle of the trees without the gallery.  At last: 

“Yours was ever an eloquent tongue, Sir Mortimer Ferne,” said the Queen, slowly.  “Hadst thou known when to hold it, much might have been different....  Thy father served us well, and once we slept at his ancient house of Ferne, rich only in the valor and loyal deeds of its masters, from old times until our own....  What is lost is lost, and other and greater matters clamor for our attention.  Go! hold thyself a prisoner, at our pleasure, in thy house of Ferne!  If thou art but a shade with other shadows, then seek the company of thy dead father and of other loyal and gallant gentlemen of thy name.  Perchance, one and all, they would have blenched had the pinch but been severe enough.  I have heard of common men—­ay, of thieves and murderers—­whose lips the rack could not unlock!  It seems that our English knights grow less resolved....  My lords, the sun is declining.  If we would take the water to-day, we must make no farther tarrying.  Your hand, my Lord of Leicester.”

Once more her train put itself into motion.  Lords and ladies, lips that smiled and hearts all busy with the next link in Ambition’s golden chain, on they swept into the pleasant outer air.  The one man of the motley throng of suitors to whom Elizabeth had spoken rose from his knee, picked up his frieze coat, and turned a face that might have gone unrecognized of friend or foe towards the door by which he had entered the gallery.

IX

Giles Arden, having ridden far as required the tale of miles from the tavern of the Triple Tun, came, upon a sunshiny afternoon of early spring, to an oak knoll where one might halt to admire a fair picture of an old house set in old gardens.  Old were the trees that shadowed it, and ivy darkened all its walls; without sound a listless beauty breathed beneath the pale blue skies; for all the sunshine and the bourgeoning of the spring, the picture seemed but sombrely rich, but sadly sweet.  To the lips of a light-of-heart there was that in its quality had brought a sigh:  as for Arden, when he had checked his horse he looked upon the scene with a groan, then presently for very mirthlessness, laughed.

“That day,” he said to himself with a grimace—­“that day when we forsook our hawking, and dismounting on this knoll, planned for him his new house!  There should be the front, there the tower, there the great room where the Queen should lie when she made progress through these ways!  All to be built when, like a tiercel-gentle to his wrist, came more fame, more gold!”

The speaker turned in his saddle and looked about him with a rueful smile.