They had no doubt been called forth with that intent, and a doubt had begun to arise in the victim’s mind whether the last reply had been really the Queen’s own.  It had been delivered to him in the street, not by the usual channel, but by a blue-coated serving-man.  Two or three days later Humfrey had told him of Langston’s interview with Walsingham, which he had at the time laughed to scorn, thinking himself able to penetrate any disguise of that Proteus, and likewise believing that he was blinding Walsingham.

He first took alarm a few days after Humfrey’s departure, and wrote to Queen Mary to warn her, convinced that the traitor must be Langston.  Ballard became himself suspected, and after lurking about in various disguises was arrested in Babington’s own lodgings.  To disarm suspicion, Antony went to Walsingham to talk about the French Mission, and tried to resume his usual habits, but in a tavern, he became aware that Langston, under some fresh shape, was watching him, and hastily throwing down the reckoning, he fled without his cloak or sword to Gage’s house at Westminster, where he took horse, hid himself in St. John’s Wood, and finally was taken, half starved, in an outhouse at Harrow, belonging to a farmer, whose mercy involved him in the like doom.

This was the substance of the story told by the unfortunate young man to Richard Talbot, whom he owned as the best and wisest friend he had ever had—­going back to the warnings twice given, that no cause is served by departing from the right; no kingdom safely won by worshipping the devil:  “And sure I did worship him when I let myself be led by Gifford,” he said.

His chief anxiety was not for his wife and her child, who he said would be well taken care of by the Ratcliffe family, and who, alas! had never won his heart.  In fact he was relieved that he was not permitted to see the young thing, even had she wished it; it could do no good to either of them, though he had written a letter, which she was to deliver, for the Queen, commending her to her Majesty’s mercy.

His love had been for Cicely, and even that had never been, as Richard saw, such purifying, restraining, self-sacrificing affection as was Humfrey’s.  It was half romance, half a sort of offshoot from his one great and absorbing passion of devotion to the Queen of Scots, which was still as strong as ever.  He entrusted Richard with his humblest commendations to her, and strove to rest in the belief that as many a conspirator before—­such as Norfolk, Throckmorton, Parry—­had perished on her behalf while she remained untouched, that so it might again be, since surely, if she were to be tried, he would have been kept alive as a witness.  The peculiar custom of the time in State prosecutions of hanging the witnesses before the trial had not occurred to him.

But how would it be with Cicely?  “Is what this fellow guessed the very truth?” he asked.

Richard made a sign of affirmation, saying, “Is it only a guess on his part?”