As to what a king’s favour itself might be worth, that my lord of Glamorgan lived to learn.

‘It is I who pay for them,’ said his wife.

‘How so, my dove?’

’Do they not cost me thee, Herbert—­and cost me very dear?  Art not ever from my sight?  Wish I not often as I lay awake in the dark, that we were all in heaven and well over with the foolery of it?  The angels keep Molly in mind of us!’

‘Yes, my Peggy, it is hard on thee, and hard on me too,’ said the earl tenderly, ’yet not so hard as upon our liege lord, the king, who selleth his plate and jewels.’

‘Pooh! what of that then, Herbert?  An’ he would leave me thee, he might have all mine, and welcome; for thou knowest, Ned, I but hold them for thee to sell when thou wilt.’

’I know; and the time may come, though, thank God, it is not yet.  What wouldst thou say, countess, if with all thy honours thou did yet come to poverty?  Canst be poor and merry, think’st thou?’

’So thou wert with me, Herbert—­Glamorgan, I would say, but my lips frame not themselves to the word.  I like not the title greatly, but when it means thee to me, then shall I love it.’

    ’Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? 
       O sweet content!’

—­sang the earl in a mellow tenor voice.

‘My lord, an’ I have leave to speak,’ said Dorothy, ’did you not say the diamond in that ring Richard Heywood sent me was of some worth?’

’I did, cousin.  It is a stone of the finest water, and of good weight, though truly I weighed it not.’

‘Then would I cast it in the king’s treasury, an’ if your lordship would condescend to be the bearer of such a small offering.’

‘No, child; the king robs not orphans.’

’Did the King of Kings rob the poor widow that cast in her two mites, then?’

’No; but perhaps the priests did.  Still, as I say, the hour may come when all our mites may be wanted, and thine be accepted with the rest, but my father and I have yet much to give, and shall have given it before that hour come.  Besides, as to thee, Dorothy, what would that handsome roundhead of thine say, if instead of keeping well the ring he gave thee, thou had turned it to the use he liked the least?’

‘He will never ask me concerning it,’ said Dorothy, with a faint smile.

’Be not over-sure of it, child.  My lady asks me many things I never thought to tell her before the priest made us one.  Dorothy, I have no right and no wish to spy into thy future, and fright thee with what, if it come at all, will come peacefully as June weather.  I have not constructed thy horoscope to cast thy nativity, and therefore I speak as one of the ignorant; but let me tell thee, for I do say it confidently, that if these wars were once over, and the king had his own again, there will be few men in his three kingdoms so worthy of the hand and heart of Dorothy Vaughan as that same roundhead fellow, Richard Heywood.  I would to God he were as good a catholic as he is a mistaken puritan!  And now, my lady, may I not send thy maiden from us, for I would talk with thee alone of certain matters—­not from distrust of Dorothy, but that they are not my own to impart, therefore I pray her absence.’