She clasped her hands together, dropped on her knees at the table that stood by her, and hid her face.  So she continued till she was roused by the sound of Cicely’s sobs.  Frightened and oppressed, and new to all terror and sorrow, the girl had followed her example in kneeling, but the very attempt to pray brought on a fit of weeping, and the endeavour to restrain what might disturb the Queen only rendered the sobs more choking and strangling, till at last Mary heard, and coming towards her, sat down on the floor, gathered her into her arms, and kissing her forehead, said, “Poor bairnie, and did she weep for her mother?  Have the sorrows of her house come on her?”

“O mother, I could not help it!  I meant to have comforted you,” said Cicely, between her sobs.

“And so thou dost, my child.  Unwittingly they have left me that which was most precious to me.”

There was consolation in the fondness of the loving embrace, at least to such sorrows as those of the maiden; and Queen Mary had an inalienable power of charming the will and affections of those in contact with her, so that insensibly there came into Cicely’s heart a sense that, so far from weeping, she should rejoice at being the one creature left to console her mother.

“And,” she said by and by, looking up with a smile, “they must go to the bottom of the old well to find anything.”

“Hush, lassie.  Never speak above thy breath in a prison till thou know’st whether walls have ears.  And, apropos, let us examine what sort of a prison they have given us this time.”

So saying Mary rose, and leaning on her daughter’s arm, proceeded to explore her new abode.  Like her apartment at the Lodge, it was at the top of the house, a fashion not uncommon when it was desirable to make the lower regions defensible; but, whereas she had always hitherto been placed in the castles of the highest nobility, she was now in that of a country knight of no great wealth or refinement, and, moreover, taken by surprise.

So the plenishing was of the simplest.  The walls were covered with tapestry so faded that the pattern could hardly be detected.  The hearth yawned dark and dull, and by it stood one chair with a moth-eaten cushion.  A heavy oaken table and two forms were in the middle of the room, and there was the dreary, fusty smell of want of habitation.  The Queen, whose instincts for fresh air were always a distress to her ladies, sprang to the mullioned window, but the heavy lattice defied all her efforts.

“Let us see the rest of our dominions,” she said, turning to a door, which led to a still more gloomy bedroom, where the only articles of furniture were a great carved bed, with curtains of some undefined dark colour, and an oaken chest.  The window was a mere slit, and even more impracticable than that of the outer room.  However, this did not seem to horrify Mary so much as it did her daughter.  “They cannot mean to keep us here long,” she said; “perhaps only for the day, while they make their search—­their unsuccessful search—­thanks to—­we know whom, little one.”