On that day, Paulett worked himself up to the strange idea that it was for the good of the unfortunate prisoner’s soul, and an act of duty to his own sovereign, to march into the prison chamber and announce to Queen Mary that being a dead woman in the eye of the law, no royal state could be permitted her, in token of which he commanded her servants to remove the canopy over her chair.  They all flatly refused to touch it, and the women began to cry “Out upon him,” for being cowardly enough to insult their mistress, and she calmly said, “Sir, you may do as you please.  My royal state comes from God, and is not yours to give or take away.  I shall die a Queen, whatever you may do by such law as robbers in a forest might use with a righteous judge.”

Intensely angered, Sir Amias came, hobbling and stumbling out to the door, pale with rage, and called on Talbot to come and bring his men to tear down the rag of vanity in which this contumacious woman put her trust.

“The men are your servants, sir,” said Humfrey, with a flush on his cheek and his teeth set; “I am here to guard the Queen of Scots, not to insult her.”

“How, sirrah?  Do you know to whom you speak?  Have you not sworn obedience to me?”

“In all things within my commission, sir; but this is as much beyond it, as I believe it to be beyond yours.”

“Insolent, disloyal varlet!  You are under ward till I can account with and discharge you.  To your chamber!”

Humfrey could but walk away, grieved that his power of bearing intelligence or alleviation to the prisoner had been forfeited, and that he should probably not even take leave of her.  Was she to be left to all the insults that the malice of her persecutor could devise?  Yet it was not exactly malice.  Paulett would have guarded her life from assassination with his own, though chiefly for his own sake, and, as he said, for that of “saving his poor posterity from so foul a blot;” but he could not bear, as he told Sir Drew Drury, to see the Popish, bloodthirsty woman sit queening it so calmly; and when he tore down her cloth of state, and sat down in her presence with his hat on, he did not so much intend to pain the woman, Mary, as to express the triumph of Elizabeth and of her religion.  Humfrey believed his service over, and began to occupy himself with putting his clothes together, while considering whether to seek his father in London or to go home.  After about an hour, he was summoned to the hall, where he expected to have found Sir Amias Paulett ready to give him his discharge.  He found, however, only Sir Drew Drury, who thus accosted him—­“Young man, you had better return to your duty.  Sir Amias is willing to overlook what passed this morning.”

“I thank you, sir, but I am not aware of having done aught to need forgiveness,” said Humfrey.