This was not untrue, but she had never thought of gratifying them in her many previous visits to Buxton.  The Earl found himself obliged either to utter a harsh and unreasonable refusal, or to organise an expedition which he personally disliked extremely, and moreover distrusted, for he did not in the least believe that Queen Mary would be so set upon gratifying her curiosity about stalactites without some ulterior motive.  He tried to set on Dr. Jones to persuade Messieurs Gorion and Bourgoin, her medical attendants, that the cave would be fatal to her rheumatism, but it so happened that the Peak Cavern was Dr. Jones’s favourite lion, the very pride of his heart.  Pool’s Hole was dear to him, but the Peak Cave was far more precious, and the very idea of the Queen of Scots honouring it with her presence, and leaving behind her the flavour of her name, was so exhilarating to the little man that if the place had been ten times more damp he would have vouched for its salubrity.  Moreover, he undertook that fumigations of fragrant woods should remove all peril of noxious exhalations, so that the Earl was obliged to give his orders that Mr. Eyre should be requested to light up the cave, and heartily did he grumble and pour forth his suspicions and annoyance to his cousin Richard.

“And I,” said the good sailor, “felt it hard not to be able to tell him that all was for the freak of a silly damsel.”

Mistress Cicely laughed a little triumphantly.  It was something like being a Queen’s daughter to have been the cause of making my Lord himself bestir himself against his will.  She had her own way, and might well be good-humoured.  “Come, dear sir father,” she said, coming up to him in a coaxing, patronising way, which once would have been quite alien to them both, “be not angered.  You know nobody means treason!  And, after all, ’tis not I but you that are the cause of all the turmoil.  If you would but have ridden soberly out with your poor little Cis, there would have been no coil, but my Lord might have paced stately and slow up and down the terrace-walk undisturbed.”

“Ah, child, child!” said Susan, vexed, though her husband could not help smiling at the arch drollery of the girl’s tone and manner, “do not thou learn light mockery of all that should be honoured.”

“I am not bound to honour the Earl,” said Cis, proudly.

“Hush, hush!” said Richard.  “I have allowed thee unchecked too long, maiden.  “Wert thou ten times what thou art, it would not give thee the right to mock at the gray-haired, highly-trusted noble, the head of the name thou dost bear.”

“And the torment of her whom I am most bound to love,” broke from Cicely petulantly.

Richard’s response to this sally was to rise up, make the young lady the lowest possible reverence, with extreme and displeased gravity, and then to quit the room.  It brought the girl to her bearings at once.  “Oh, mother, mother, how have I displeased him?”