“Sir, how could a man brook seeing that fellow on his knee to her?  Is it not enough to be debarred from my sweet princess myself, but I must see her beset by a Papist and traitor, fostered and encouraged too?”

“And thou couldst not rest secure in the utter impossibility of her being given to him?  He is as much out of reach of her as thou art.”

“He has secured my Lord and my Lady on his side!” growled Humfrey.

“My Lord is not an Amurath, nor my Lady either,” said Richard, shortly.  “As long as I pass for her father I have power to dispose of her, and I am not going to give another woman’s daughter away without her consent.”

“Yet the fellow may have her ear,” said Humfrey.  “I know him to be popishly inclined, and there is a web of those Romish priests all over the island, whereof this Queen holds the strands in her fingers, captive though she be.  I should not wonder if she had devised this fellow’s suit.”

“This is the very madness of jealousy, Humfrey,” said his father.  “The whole matter was, as thy mother and thy Lord have both told me, simply a device of my Lady Countess’s own brain.”

“Babington took to it wondrous naturally,” muttered Humfrey.

“That may be; but as for the lady at Wingfield, her talk to our poor maid hath been all of archdukes and dukes.  She is far too haughty to think for a moment of giving her daughter to a mere Derbyshire esquire, not even of noble blood.  You may trust her for that.”

This pacified Humfrey for a little while, especially as the bell was clanging for the meal which had been unusually deferred, and he had to hurry away to remove certain marks, which were happily the result of the sweetbrier weapons instead of that of Babington.

That a little blood had been shed was shown by the state of his sword point, but Antony had disclaimed being hurt when the master of the house came up, and in the heat of the rebuke the father and son had hardly noticed that he had thrown a kerchief round his left hand ere he moved away.

Before dinner was over, word was brought in from the door that Master Will Cavendish wanted to speak to Master Humfrey.  The ladies’ hearts were in their mouths, as it were, lest it should be to deliver a cartel, and they looked to the father to interfere, but he sat still, contenting himself with saying, as his son craved license to quit the board, “Use discretion as well as honour.”

They were glad that the next minute Humfrey came back to call his father to the door, where Will Cavendish sat on horseback.  He had come by desire of Babington, who had fully intended that the encounter should be kept secret, but some servant must have been aware of it either from the garden or the park, and the Countess had got wind of it.  She had summoned Babington to her presence, before the castle barber had finished dealing with the cut in his hand, and the messenger reported that “my Lady was in one of her raging fits,” and talked of throwing young Humfrey into a dungeon, if not having him hung for his insolence.