But Cicely could see that she expected the worst, and believed in a set purpose to shed her blood, and she spent much time in devotion, though sorely distressed by the absence of all those appliances which her Church had taught her to rest upon.  And these prayers, which often began with floods of tears, so that Cicely drew away into the window with her distaff in order not to seem to watch them, ended with rendering her serene and calm, with a look of high resignation, as having offered herself as a sacrifice and martyr for her Church.

And yet was it wholly as a Roman Catholic that she had been hated, intrigued against, and deposed in her own kingdom?  Was it simply as a Roman Catholic that she was, as she said, the subject of a more cruel plot than that of which she was accused?

Mysterious woman that she was, she was never more mysterious than to her daughter in those seventeen days that they were shut up together!  It did not so much strike Cicely at the time, when she was carried along with all her mother’s impulses and emotions, without reflecting on them, but when in after times she thought over all that then had passed, she felt how little she had understood.

They suffered a good deal from the heat and closeness of the rooms, for Mary was like a modern Englishwoman in her craving for free air, and these were the dog-days.  They had contrived by the help of a diamond that the Queen carried about with her, after the fashion of the time, to extract a pane or two from the lattices so ingeniously that the master of the house never found it out.  And as their two apartments looked out different ways, they avoided the full sunshine, for they had neither curtains nor blinds to their windows, by moving from one to the other; but still the closeness was very oppressive, and in the heat of the day, just after dinner, they could do nothing but lie on the table, while the Queen told stories of her old life in France, till sometimes they both went to sleep.  Most of her dainty needlework was done in the long light mornings, for she hardly slept at all in the hot nights.  Cis scarcely saw her in bed, for she prayed long after the maiden had fallen asleep, and was up with the light and embroidering by the window.

She only now began to urge Cicely to believe as she did, and to join her Church, taking blame to herself for never having attempted it more seriously.  She told of the oneness and the glory of Roman Catholicism as she had seen it in France, held out its promises and professions, and dwelt on the comfort of the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints; assuring Cicely that there was nothing but sacrilege, confusion, and cruelty on the other side.