“And why, sweetheart?” said the Queen, moved by a new impulse; “what hath he, this false knight, since such thou accountest him, done to thee?”

“Oh, worse than sorrow, madam, and worse than injury—­he has sown dissension where most there should be peace.  I shall go mad if I look longer on him!”

“Beshrew me, but I think thou art distraught already,” answered the Queen.—­“My Lord Hunsdon, look to this poor distressed young woman, and let her be safely bestowed, and in honest keeping, till we require her to be forthcoming.”

Two or three of the ladies in attendance, either moved by compassion for a creature so interesting, or by some other motive, offered their services to look after her; but the Queen briefly answered, “Ladies, under favour, no.  You have all (give God thanks) sharp ears and nimble tongues; our kinsman Hunsdon has ears of the dullest, and a tongue somewhat rough, but yet of the slowest.—­Hunsdon, look to it that none have speech of her.”

“By Our Lady,” said Hunsdon, taking in his strong, sinewy arms the fading and almost swooning form of Amy, “she is a lovely child! and though a rough nurse, your Grace hath given her a kind one.  She is safe with me as one of my own ladybirds of daughters.”

So saying, he carried her off; unresistingly and almost unconsciously, his war-worn locks and long, grey beard mingling with her light-brown tresses, as her head reclined on his strong, square shoulder.  The Queen followed him with her eye.  She had already, with that self-command which forms so necessary a part of a Sovereign’s accomplishments, suppressed every appearance of agitation, and seemed as if she desired to banish all traces of her burst of passion from the recollection of those who had witnessed it.  “My Lord of Hunsdon says well,” she observed, “he is indeed but a rough nurse for so tender a babe.”

“My Lord of Hunsdon,” said the Dean of St. Asaph—­“I speak it not in defamation of his more noble qualities—­hath a broad license in speech, and garnishes his discourse somewhat too freely with the cruel and superstitious oaths which savour both of profaneness and of old Papistrie.”

“It is the fault of his blood, Mr. Dean,” said the Queen, turning sharply round upon the reverend dignitary as she spoke; “and you may blame mine for the same distemperature.  The Boleyns were ever a hot and plain-spoken race, more hasty to speak their mind than careful to choose their expressions.  And by my word—­I hope there is no sin in that affirmation—­I question if it were much cooled by mixing with that of Tudor.”

As she made this last observation she smiled graciously, and stole her eyes almost insensibly round to seek those of the Earl of Leicester, to whom she now began to think she had spoken with hasty harshness upon the unfounded suspicion of a moment.