Mr. Heatherthwayte seemed at first hardly to hear him, so overpowered was he with the notion that the daughter of her, whom he was in the habit of classing with Athaliah and Herodias, was in his house, resting on the innocent pillow of Oil-of-Gladness.  He made his guest recount to him the steps by which the discovery had been made, and at last seemed to embrace the idea.  Then he asked whether Master Talbot were about to carry the young lady to the protection of her brother in Scotland; and when the answer was that it might be poor protection even if conferred, and that by all accounts the Court of Scotland was by no means a place in which to leave a lonely damsel with no faithful guardian, the minister asked—­

“How then will you bestow the maiden?”

“In that, sir, I came to ask you to aid me.  My son Humfrey is following on our steps, leaving Fotheringhay so soon as his charge there is ended; and I ask of you to wed him to the maid, whom we will then take to Holland, when he will take service with the States.”

The amazement of the clergyman was redoubled, and he began at first to plead with Richard that a perilous overleaping ambition was leading him thus to mate his son with an evil, though a royal, race.

At this Richard smiled and shook his head, pointing out that the very last thing any of them desired was that Cicely’s birth should be known; and that even if it were, her mother’s marriage was very questionable.  It was no ambition, he said, that actuated his son, “But you saw yourself how, nineteen years ago, the little lad welcomed her as his little sister come back to him.  That love hath grown up with him.  When, at fifteen years old, he learnt that she was a nameless stranger, his first cry was that he would wed her and give her his name.  Never hath his love faltered; and even when this misfortune of her rank was known, and he lost all hope of gaining her, while her mother bade her renounce him, his purpose was even still to watch over and guard her; and at the end, beyond all our expectations, they have had her mother’s dying blessing and entreaty that he would take her.”

“Sir, do you give me your word for that?”

“Yea, Master Heatherthwayte, as I am a true man.  Mind you, worldly matters look as different to a poor woman who knoweth the headsman is in the house, as to one who hath her head on her dying pillow.  This Queen had devised plans for sending our poor Cis abroad to her French and Lorraine kindred, with some of the French ladies of her train.”

“Heaven forbid!” broke out Heatherthwayte, in horror.  “The rankest of Papists—­”

“Even so, and with recommendations to give her in marriage to some adventurous prince whom the Spaniards might abet in working woe to us in her name.  But when she saw how staunch the child is in believing as mine own good dame taught her, she saw, no doubt, that this would be mere giving her over to be persecuted and mewed in a convent.”