“Thou hast said it, child!  My bairn, my bonnie bairn!” and the girl was absorbed in a passionate embrace and strained convulsively to a bosom which heaved with the sobs of tempestuous emotion, and the caresses were redoubled upon her again and again with increasing fervour that almost frightened her.

“Speak to me!  Speak to me!  Let me hear my child’s voice.”

“Oh, madam—­”

“Call me mother!  Never have I heard that sound from my child’s lips.  I have borne two children, two living children, only to be stripped of both.  Speak, child—­let me hear thee.”

Cis contrived to say “Mother, my mother,” but scarcely with effusion.  It was all so strange, and she could not help feeling as if Susan were the mother she knew and was at ease with.  All this was much too like a dream, from which she longed to awake.  And there was Mrs. Kennedy too, rising up and crying quite indignantly—­“Mother indeed!  Is that all thou hast to say, as though it were a task under the rod, when thou art owned for her own bairn by the fairest and most ill-used queen in Christendom?  Out on thee!  Have the Southron loons chilled thine heart and made thee no leal to thine ain mother that hath hungered for thee?”

The angry tones, and her sense of her own shortcomings, could only make Cis burst into tears.

“Hush, hush, nurse! thou shalt not chide my new-found bairn.  She will learn to ken us better in time if they will leave her with us,” said Mary.  “There, there; greet not so sair, mine ain.  I ask thee not to share my sorrows and my woes.  That Heaven forefend.  I ask thee but to come from time to time and cheer my nights, and lie on my weary bosom to still its ache and yearning, and let me feel that I have indeed a child.”

“Oh, mother, mother!” Cis cried again in a stifled voice, as one who could not utter her feelings, but not in the cold dry tone that had called forth Mrs. Kennedy’s wrath.  “Pardon me, I know not—­I cannot say what I would.  But oh!  I would do anything for—­for your Grace.”

“All that I would ask of thee is to hold thy peace and keep our counsel.  Be Cicely Talbot by day as ever.  Only at night be mine—­my child, my Bride, for so wast thou named after our Scottish patroness.  It was a relic of her sandals that was hung about thy neck, and her ship in which thou didst sail; and lo, she heard and guarded thee, and not merely saved thee from death, but provided thee a happy joyous home and well-nurtured childhood.  We must render her our thanks, my child.  Beata Brigitta, ora pro nobis.”

“It was the good God Almighty who saved me, madam,” said Cis bluntly.

“Alack!  I forgot that yonder good lady could not fail to rear thee in the outer darkness of her heresy; but thou wilt come back to us, my ain wee thing!  Heaven forbid that I should deny Whose Hand it was that saved thee, but it was at the blessed Bride’s intercession.  No doubt she reserved for me, who had turned to her in my distress, this precious consolation!  But I will not vex thy little heart with debate this first night.  To be mother and child is enough for us.  What art thou pondering?”