“Monsieur Gorion could swear to them instantly.”

“What is it?  Oh, what is it, madam?” cried Cis, affrighted; “is there anything on my back?  No plague spot, I hope;” and her eyes grew round with terror.

The Queen laughed.  “No plague spot, sweet one, save, perhaps, in the eyes of you Protestants, but to me they are a gladsome sight—­a token I never hoped to see.”

And the bewildered girl felt a pair of soft lips kiss each mark in turn, and then the covering was quickly and caressingly restored, and Mary added, “Lie down, my child, and now to bed, to bed, my maids.  Patent the lights.”  Then, making the sign of the cross, as Cis had seen poor Antony Babington do, the Queen, just as all the lights save one were extinguished, was divested of her wrapper and veil, and took her place beside Cis on the pillows.  The two Maries left the chamber, and Jean Kennedy disposed herself on a pallet at the foot of the bed.

“And so,” said the Queen, in a low voice, tender, but with a sort of banter, “she thought she had the plague spot on her little white shoulders.  Didst thou really not know what marks thou bearest, little one?”

“No, madam,” said Cis.  “Is it what I have felt with my fingers?”

“Listen, child,” said Mary.  “Art thou at thine ease; thy poor shoulder resting well?  There, then, give me thine hand, and I will tell thee a tale.  There was a lonely castle in a lake, grim, cold, and northerly; and thither there was brought by angry men a captive woman.  They had dealt with her strangely and subtilly; they had laid on her the guilt of the crimes themselves had wrought; and when she clung to the one man whom at least she thought honest, they had forced and driven her into wedding him, only that all the world might cry out upon her, forsake her, and deliver her up into those cruel hands.”

There was something irresistibly pathetic in Mary’s voice, and the maiden lay gazing at her with swimming eyes.

“Thou dost pity that poor lady, sweet one?  There was little pity for her then!  She had looked her last on her lad—­bairn; ay, and they had said she had striven to poison him, and they were breeding him up to loathe the very name of his mother; yea, and to hate and persecute the Church of his father and his mother both.  And so it was, that the lady vowed that if another babe was granted to her, sprung of that last strange miserable wedlock, these foes of hers should have no part in it, nor knowledge of its very existence, but that it should be bred up beyond their ken—­safe out of their reach.  Ah! child; good Nurse Kennedy can best tell thee how the jealous eyes and ears were disconcerted, and in secrecy and sorrow that birth took place.”

Cis’s heart was beating too fast for speech, but there was a tight close pressure of the hand that Mary had placed within hers.