Poor Cis!  If her inmost heart declared Humfrey Talbot to be prince enough for her, she durst not entertain the sentiment, not knowing whether it were unworthy, and while Marie de Courcelles read aloud a French legend of a saint to soothe the Queen to sleep, she lay longing after the more sympathetic mother, and wondering what was passing in the hall.

Richard Talbot had communed with his wife’s eyes, and made up his mind that Humfrey should know the full truth before the Queen should enjoin his being put off with the story of the parentage she had invented for Bride Hepburn; and while some of the gentlemen followed their habit of sitting late over the wine cup, he craved their leave to have his son to himself a little while, and took him out in the summer twilight on the greensward, going through the guards, for whom he, as the gentleman warder, had the password of the night.  In compliment to the expedition of the day it had been made “True love and the Flowing Well.”  It sounded agreeable in Humfrey’s ears; he repeated it again, and then added “Little Cis! she hath come to woman’s estate, and she hath caught some of the captive lady’s pretty tricks of the head and hands.  How long hath she been so thick with her?”

“Since this journey.  I have to speak with thee, my son.”

“I wait your pleasure, sir,” said Humfrey, and as his father paused a moment ere communicating his strange tidings, he rendered the matter less easy by saying, “I guess your purpose.  If I may at once wed my little Cis I will send word to Sir John Norreys that I am not for this expedition to the Low Countries, though there is good and manly work to be done there, and I have the offer of a command, but I gave not my word till I knew your will, and whether we might wed at once.”

“Thou hast much to hear, my son.”

“Nay, surely no one has come between!” exclaimed Humfrey.  “Methought she was less frank and more coy than of old.  If that sneaking traitor Babington hath been making up to her I will slit his false gullet for him.”

“Hush, hush, Humfrey! thy seafaring boasts skill not here.  No man hath come between thee and yonder poor maid.”

“Poor!  You mean not that she is sickly.  Were she so, I would so tend her that she should be well for mere tenderness.  But no, she was the very image of health.  No man, said you, father?  Then it is a woman.  Ah! my Lady Countess is it, bent on making her match her own way?  Sir, you are too good and upright to let a tyrannous dame like that sever between us, though she be near of kin to us.  My mother might scruple to cross her, but you have seen the world, sir.”

“My lad, you are right in that it is a woman who stands between you and Cis, but it is not the Countess.  None would have the right to do so, save the maiden’s own mother.”

“Her mother!  You have discovered her lineage!  Can she have ought against me?—­I, your son, sir, of the Talbot blood, and not ill endowed?”