Meantime, all due formalities having been gone through, Lord Shrewsbury bowed himself out backwards with a dexterity that Cis breathlessly admired in one so stately and so stiff, forgetting that he had daily practice in the art.  Then Queen Mary courteously entreated her visitors to be seated, near herself, asking with a smile if this were not the little maiden who had queened it so prettily in the brake some few years since.  Cis blushed and drew back her head with a pretty gesture of dignified shyness as Susan made answer for her that she was the same.

“I should have known it,” said the Queen, smiling, “by the port of her head alone.  ’Tis strange,” she said, musing, “that maiden hath the bearing of head and neck that I have never seen save in my own mother, the saints rest her soul, and in her sisters, and which we always held to be their inheritance from the blood of Charlemagne.”

“Your grace does her too much honour,” Susan contrived to say, thankful that no less remote resemblance had been detected.

“It was a sad farce when they tried to repeat your pretty comedy with the chief performer omitted,” proceeded the Queen, directing her words to the girl, but the mother replied for her.

“Your Grace will pardon me, I could not permit her to play in public, before all the menie of the castle.”

“Madame is a discreet and prudent mother,” said the Queen.  “The mistake was in repeating the representation at all, not in abstaining from appearing in it.  I should be very sorry that this young lady should have been concerned in a spectacle a la comtesse.”

There was something in the intonation of “this young lady” that won Cis’s heart on the spot, something in the concluding words that hurt Susan’s faithful loyalty towards her kinswoman, in spite of the compliment to herself.  However Mary did not pursue the subject, perceiving with ready tact that it was distasteful, and proceeded to ask Dame Susan’s opinion of her work, which was intended as a gift to her good aunt, the Abbess of Soissons.  How strangely the name fell upon Susan’s ear.  It was a pale blue satin coverlet, worked in large separate squares, innumerable shields and heraldic devices of Lorraine, Bourbon, France, Scotland, etc., round the border, and beautiful meandering patterns of branches, with natural flowers and leaves growing from them covering the whole with a fascinating regular irregularity.  Cis could not repress an exclamation of delight, which brought the most charming glance of the winning eyes upon her.  There was stitchery here that she did not understand, but when she looked at some of the flowers, she could not help uttering the sentiment that the eyes of the daisies were not as mother could make them.

So, as a great favour, Queen Mary entreated to be shown Mrs. Talbot’s mode of dealing with the eyes of the daisies.  No, her good Seaton would not learn so well as she should; Madame must come and sit by her and show her.  Meantime here was her poor little Bijou whimpering to be taken on her lap.  Would not he find a comforter in sweet Mistress—­ah, what was her name?