till the Queen had made her first vain attempt to escape, after which Mary had decided on sending her with her nurse to Dumbarton Castle, whence Lord Flemyng would despatch her to France.  The Abbess was implored to shelter her, in complete ignorance of her birth, until such time as her mother should resume her liberty and her throne.  “Or if,” the poor Queen said, “I perish in the hands of my enemies, you will deal with her as my uncles of Guise and Lorraine think fit, since, should her unhappy little brother die in the rude hands of yonder traitors, she may bring the true faith back to both realms.”

“Ah!” cried Susan, with a sudden gasp of dismay, as she bethought her that the child was indeed heiress to both realms after the young King of Scots.  “But has there been no quest after her?  Do they deem her lost?”

“No doubt they do.  Either all hands were lost in the Bride of Dunbar, or if any of the crew escaped, they would report the loss of nurse and child.  The few who know that the little one was born believe her to have perished.  None will ever ask for her.  They deem that she has been at the bottom of the sea these twelve years or more.”

“And you would still keep the knowledge to ourselves?” asked his wife, in a tone of relief.

“I would I knew it not myself!” sighed Richard.  “Would that I could blot it out of my mind.”

“It were far happier for the poor maid herself to remain no one’s child but ours,” said Susan.

“In sooth it is!  A drop of royal blood is in these days a mere drop of poison to them that have the ill luck to inherit it.  As my lord said the other day, it brings the headsman’s axe after it.”

“And our boy Humfrey calls himself contracted to her!”

“So long as we let the secret die with us that can do her no ill.  Happily the wench favours not her mother, save sometimes in a certain lordly carriage of the head and shoulders.  She is like enough to some of the Scots retinue to make me think she must take her face from her father, the villain, who, someone told me, was beetle-browed and swarthy.”

“Lives he still?”

“So ’tis thought, but somewhere in prison in the north.  There have been no tidings of his death; but my Lady Queen, you’ll remember, treats the marriage as nought, and has made offer of herself for the misfortune of the Duke of Norfolk, ay, and of this Don John, and I know not whom besides.”

“She would not have done that had she known that our Cis was alive.”

“Mayhap she would, mayhap not.  I believe myself she would do anything short of disowning her Popery to get out of prison; but as matters stand I doubt me whether Cis—­”

“The Lady Bride Hepburn,” suggested Susan.

“Pshaw, poor child, I misdoubt me whether they would own her claim even to that name.”

“And they might put her in prison if they did,” said Susan.