;
is not the race fairly mine, I ask?" and, careless in act as in speech,
she gave the Lord Admiral's horse, as she spoke, so sharp a cut with her
riding whip as to make the big brute rear in sudden surprise, and
almost unhorse its rider, while an unchecked laugh came from its fair
tormentor.

"Good faith, Mistress," answered Sir Thomas Seymour, the Lord High
Admiral, gracefully swallowing his exclamation of surprise, "your
ladyship hath fairly won, and, sure, hath no call to punish both myself
and my good Selim here by such unwarranted chastisement. Will your grace
dismount?"

And, vaulting from his seat, he gallantly extended his hand to help the
young girl from her horse; while, on the same instant, another in her
train, a handsome young fellow of the girl's own age, knelt on the
frozen ground and held her stirrup.

But this independent young maid would have none of their courtesies.
Ignoring the outstretched hands of both the man and boy, she sprang
lightly from her horse, and, as she did so, with a sly and sudden push
of her dainty foot, she sent the kneeling lad sprawling backward, while
her merry peal of laughter rang out as an accompaniment to his downfall.

"Without your help, my lords--without your help, so please you both,"
she cried. "Why, Dudley," she exclaimed, in mock surprise, as she threw
a look over her shoulder at the prostrate boy, "are you there? Beshrew
me, though, you do look like one, of goodman Roger's Dorking cocks in
the poultry yonder, so red and ruffled of feather do you seem. There,
see now, I do repent me of my discourtesy. You, Sir Robert, shall squire
me to the hall, and Lord Seymour must even content himself with playing
the gallant to good Mistress Ashley"; and, leaning on the arm of the
now pacified Dudley, the self-willed girl tripped lightly up the
entrance-steps.

Self-willed and thoughtless--even rude and hoydenish--we may think her
in these days of gentler manners and more guarded speech. But those were
less refined and cultured times than these in which we live; and
the rough, uncurbed nature of "Kinge Henrye the viii. of Most Famous
Memorye," as the old chronicles term the "bluff King Hal," reappeared to
a noticeable extent in the person of his second child, the daughter
of ill-fated Anne Boleyn--"my ladye's grace" the Princess Elizabeth of
England.

And yet we should be readier to excuse this impetuous young princess of
three hundred years ago than were even her associ