on his stout arm and faithful heart.  To look across at him and know him near often seemed her best support, and was she to be cut off from him for ever?  The devotions of the Queen, though she had been deprived of her almoner had been much increased of late as one preparing for death; and with them were associated all her household of the Roman Catholic faith, leaving out Cicely and the two Mrs. Curlls.  The long oft-repeated Latin orisons, such as the penitential Psalms, would certainly have been wearisome to the girl, but it gave her a pang to be pointedly excluded as one who had no part nor lot with her mother.  Perhaps this was done by calculation, in order to incline her to embrace her mother’s faith; and the time was not spent very pleasantly, as she had nothing but needlework to occupy her, and no society save that of the sisters Curll.  Barbara’s spirits were greatly depressed by the loss of her infant and anxiety for her husband.  His evidence might be life or death to the Queen, and his betrayal of her confidence, or his being tortured for his fidelity, were terrible alternatives for his wife’s imagination.  It was hard to say whether she were more sorry or glad when, on leaving Chartley, she was forbidden to continue her attendance on the Queen, and set free to follow him to London.  The poor lady knew nothing, and dreaded everything.  She could not help discussing her anxieties when alone with Cicely, thus rendering perceptible more and more of the ramifications of plot and intrigue—­past and present—­at which she herself only guessed a part.  Assuredly the finding herself a princess, and sharing the captivity of a queen, had not proved so like a chapter of the Morte d’Arthur as it had seemed to Cicely at Buxton.

It was as unlike as was riding a white palfrey through a forest, guided by knights in armour, to the being packed with all the ladies into a heavy jolting conveyance, guarded before and behind by armed servants and yeomen, among whom Humfrey’s form could only now and then be detected.

The Queen had chosen her seat where she could best look out from the scant amount of window.  She gazed at the harvest-fields full of sheaves, the orchards laden with ruddy apples, the trees assuming their autumn tints, with lingering eyes, as of one who foreboded that these sights of earth were passing from her.

Two nights were spent on the road, one at Leicester; and on the fourth day, the captain in charge of the castle for the governor Sir William Fitzwilliam, who had come to escort and receive her, came to the carriage window and bade her look up.  “This is Periho Lane,” he said, “whence your Grace may have the first sight of the poor house which is to have the honour of receiving you.”

“Perio!  I perish,” repeated Mary; “an ominous road.”

The place showed itself to be of immense strength.  The hollow sound caused by rolling over a drawbridge was twice heard, and the carriage crossed two courts before stopping at the foot of a broad flight of stone steps, where stood Sir William Fitzwilliam and Sir Amias Paulett ready to hand out the Queen.