did not conceal the active, well-shaped feet.  There was something extraordinarily majestic in her whole bearing, especially the poise of her head, which made the spectator never perceive how small her stature actually was.  Her face and complexion, too, were of the cast on which time is slow to make an impression, being always pale and fair, with keen and delicately-cut features; so that her admirers had quite as much reason to be dazzled as when she was half her present age; nay, perhaps more, for the habit of command had added to the regality which really was her principal beauty.  Sir Christopher Hatton, with a handsome but very small face at the top of a very tall and portly frame, dressed in the extreme of foppery, came behind her, and then a bevy of ladies and gentlemen.

As the Talbots approached, she was moving slowly on, unusually erect even for her, and her face composed to severe majesty, like that of a judge, the tawny eyes with a strange gleam in them fixed on some one in the throng on the grass near at hand.  Lord Talbot advanced with a bow so low that he swept the ground with his plume, and while the two youths followed his example, Diccon’s quick eye noted that she glanced for one rapid second at their weapons, then continued her steady gaze, never withdrawing it even to receive Lord Talbot’s salutation as he knelt before her, though she said, “We greet you well, my good lord.  Are not we well guarded, not having one man with a sword near me?”

“Here are three good swords, madam,” returned he, “mine own, and those of my two young kinsmen, whom I venture to present to your Majesty, as they bear greetings from your trusty servant, Sir Francis Drake.”

While he spoke there had been a by-play unperceived by him, or by the somewhat slow and tardy Hatton.  A touch from Diccon had made Humfrey follow the direction of the Queen’s eye, and they saw it was fixed on a figure in a loose cloak strangely resembling that which they had seen on the stair of the house Babington had entered.  They also saw a certain quailing and cowering of the form, and a scowl on the shaggy red eyebrows, and Irish features, and Humfrey at once edged himself so as to come between the fellow and the Queen, though he was ready to expect a pistol shot in his back, but better thus, was his thought, than that it should strike her,—­and both laid their hands on their swords.

“How now!” said Hatton, “young men, you are over prompt.  Her Majesty needs no swords.  You are out of rank.  Fall in and do your obeisance.”

Something in the Queen’s relaxed gaze told Humfrey that the peril was over, and that he might kneel as Talbot named him, explaining his lineage as Elizabeth always wished to have done.  A sort of tremor passed over her, but she instantly recalled her attention.  “From Drake!” she said, in her clear, somewhat shrill voice.  “So, young gentleman, you have been with the pirate who outruns our orders, and fills our brother of Spain with malice such that he would have our life by fair or foul means.”