“The poor mother,” went on the Queen in a low trembling voice, “durst have scarce one hour’s joy of her first and only daughter, ere the trusty Gorion took the little one from her, to be nursed in a hut on the other side of the lake.  There,” continued Mary, forgetting the third person, “I hoped to have joined her, so soon as I was afoot again.  The faithful lavender lent me her garments, and I was already in the boat, but the men-at-arms were rude and would have pulled down my muffler; I raised my hand to protect myself, and it was all too white.  They had not let me stain it, because the dye would not befit a washerwoman.  So there was I dragged back to ward again, and all our plans overthrown.  And it seemed safer and meeter to put my little one out of reach of all my foes, even if it were far away from her mother’s aching heart.  Not one more embrace could I be granted, but my good chaplain Ross—­whom the saints rest—­baptized her in secret, and Gorion had set two marks on the soft flesh, which he said could never be blotted out in after years, and then her father’s clanswoman, Alison Hepburn, undertook to carry her to France, with a letter of mine bound up in her swathing clothes, committing her to the charge of my good aunt, the Abbess of Soissons, in utter secrecy, until better days should come.  Alas!  I thought them not so far off.  I deemed that were I once beyond the clutches of Morton, Ruthven, and the rest, the loyal would rally once more round my standard, and my crown would be mine own, mine enemies and those of my Church beneath my feet.  Little did I guess that my escape would only be to see them slain and routed, and that when I threw myself on the hospitality of my cousin, her tender mercies would prove such as I have found them.  ‘Libera me, Dominie, libera me.’”

Cis began dimly to understand, but she was still too much awed to make any demonstration, save a convulsive pressure of the Queen’s hand, and the murmuring of the Latin prayer distressed her.

Presently Mary resumed.  “Long, long did I hope my little one was safely sheltered from all my troubles in the dear old cloisters of Soissons, and that it was caution in my good aunt the abbess that prevented my hearing of her; but through my faithful servants, my Lord Flemyng, who had been charged to speed her from Scotland, at length let me know that the ship in which she sailed, the Bride of Dunbar, had been never heard of more, and was thought to have been cast away in a tempest that raged two days after she quitted Dunbar.  And I—­I shed some tears, but I could well believe that the innocent babe had been safely welcomed among the saints, and I could not grieve that she was, as I thought, spared from the doom that rests upon the race of Stewart.  Till one week back, I gave thanks for that child of sorrow as cradled in Paradise.”

Then followed a pause, and then Cis said in a low trembling voice, “And it was from the wreck of the Bride of Dunbar that I was taken?”