“Nay, Mr. Talbot, is it well to go on in a deceit?”

“Call it rather a concealment,” said Richard.  “We have doubted it since, but when we began, it was merely that there was none to whom it seemed needful to explain that the babe was not the little daughter we buried here.  But how did you learn it?  It imports to know.”

“Sir, do you remember your old servant Colet, Gervas’s wife?  It will be three years next Whitsuntide that hearing a great outcry as of a woman maltreated as I passed in the street, I made my way into the house and found Gervas verily beating his wife with a broomstick.  After I had rebuked him and caused him to desist, I asked him the cause, and he declared it to be that his wife had been gadding to a stinking Papist fellow, who would be sure to do a mischief to his noble captain, Mr. Talbot.  Thereupon Colet declares that she had done no harm, the gentleman wist all before.  She knew him again for the captain’s kinsman who was in the house the day that the captain brought home the babe.”

“Cuthbert Langston!”

“Even so, sir.  It seems that he had been with this woman, and questioned her closely on all she remembered of the child, learning from her what I never knew before, that there were marks branded on her shoulders and a letter sewn in her clothes.  Was it so, sir?”

“Ay, but my wife and I thought that even Colet had never seen them.”

“Nothing can escape a woman, sir.  This man drew all from her by assuring her that the maiden belonged to some great folk, and was even akin to the King and Queen of Scots, and that she might have some great reward if she told her story to them.  She even sold him some three or four gold and ivory beads which she says she found when sweeping out the room where the child was first undressed.”

“Hath she ever heard more of the fellow?”

“Nay, but Gervas since told me that he had met some of my Lord’s men who told him that your daughter was one of the Queen of Scots’ ladies, and said he, ’I held my peace; but methought, It hath come of the talebearing of that fellow to whom my wife prated.’”

“Gervas guessed right,” said Richard.  “That Langston did contrive to make known to the Queen of Scots such tokens as led to her owning the maiden as of near kin to her by the mother’s side, and to her husband on the father’s; but for many reasons she entreated us to allow the damsel still to bear our name, and be treated as our child.”

“I doubt me whether it were well done of you, sir,” said Mr. Heatherthwayte.

“Of that,” said Richard, drawing up into himself, “no man can judge for another.”

“She hath been with that woman; she will have imbibed her Popish vanities!” exclaimed the poor clergyman, almost ready to start up and separate Oil-of-Gladness at once from the contamination.

“You may be easy on that score,” said Richard drily.  “Her faith is what my good wife taught her, and she hath constantly attended the preachings of the chaplains of Sir Amias Paulett, who be all of your own way of thinking.”