The maiden did not show any great haste to open the letter, being aware that the true gist of it could only be discovered in private, and her father was studying his own likewise in silence.  It was from Sir Ralf Sadler to request that Mistress Cicely might be permitted to become a regular member of the household.  There was now a vacancy since, though Mrs. Curll was nearly as much about the Queen as ever, it was as the secretary’s wife, not as one of the maiden attendants; and Sir Ralf wrote that he wished the more to profit by the opportunity, as he might soon be displaced by some one not of a temper greatly to consider the prisoner’s wishes.  Moreover, he said the poor lady was ill at ease, and much dejected at the tenor of her late letters from Scotland, and that she had said repeatedly that nothing would do her good but the presence of her pretty playfellow.  Sir Ralf added assurances that he would watch over the maiden like his own daughter, and would take the utmost care of the faith and good order of all within his household.  Curll also wrote by order of his mistress a formal application for the young lady, to which Mary had added in her own hand, “I thank the good Master Richard and Mrs. Susan beforehand, for I know they will not deny me.”

Refusal was, of course, impossible to a mother who had every right to claim her own child; and there was nothing to be done but to fix the time for setting off:  and Cicely, who had by this time read her own letter, or at least all that was on the surface, looked up tremulous, with a strange frightened gladness, and said, “Mother, she needs me.”

“I shall shortly be returning home,” said Antony, “and shall much rejoice if I may be one of the party who will escort this fair maiden.”

“I shall take my daughter myself on a pillion, sir,” said Richard, shortly.

“Then, sir, I may tell my Lord that you purpose to grant this request,” said Will Cavendish, who had expected at least some time to be asked for deliberation, and knew his mother would expect her permission to be requested.

“I may not choose but do so,” replied Richard; and then, thinking he might have said too much, he added, “It were sheer cruelty to deny any solace to the poor lady.”

“Sick and in prison, and balked by her only son,” added Susan, “one’s heart cannot but ache for her.”

“Let not Mr. Secretary Walsingham hear you say so, good madam,” said Cavendish, smiling.  “In London they think of her solely as a kind of malicious fury shut up in a cage, and there were those who looked askance at me when I declared that she was a gentlewoman of great sweetness and kindness of demeanour.  I believe myself they will not rest till they have her blood!”

Cis and Susan cried out with horror, and Babington with stammering wrath demanded whether she was to be assassinated in the Spanish fashion, or on what pretext a charge could be brought against her.  “Well,” Cavendish answered, “as the saying is, give her rope enough, and she will hang herself.  Indeed, there’s no doubt but that she tampered enough with Throckmorton’s plot to have been convicted of misprision of treason, and so she would have been, but that her most sacred Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, would have no charge made against her.