suggested her eldest sister.

"Well, so much the better," was Lucrece's cool admission.

"So much the worse, to my thinking," said Margaret. "Would I by my
good-will be a queen, and sit all day with my hands in my lap, a-toying
with the virginals, and fluttering of my fan,--and my heaviest
concernment whether I will wear on the morrow my white velvet gown
guarded with sables, or my black satin furred with minever? By my
troth, nay!"

"Is that thy fantasy of a queen, Meg?" asked Clare, laughing. "Truly, I
had thought the poor lady should have heavier concernments than so."

"Well!" said Blanche, in a confidential whisper, "I am never like to be
a queen; but I will show you one thing,--I would right dearly love to be
presented in the Queen's Majesty's Court."

"Dear heart!--Presented, quotha!" exclaimed Margaret. "Prithee, take
not me withal."

"Nay, I will take these holy sisters," said Blanche, merrily. "What say
ye, Clare and Lysken?"

"I have no care to be in the Court, I thank thee," quietly replied
Clare.

"I shall be, some day," observed Lysken, calmly, without lifting her
head.

"Thou!--presented in the Court!" cried Blanche.

For of all the five, girls, Lysken was much the most unlikely ever to
attain that eminence.

"Even so," she said, unmoved.

"Hast thou had promise thereof?"

"I have had promise thereof," repeated Lysken, in a tone which was lost
upon Blanche, but Clare thought she began to understand her.

"Who hath promised thee?" asked Blanche, intensely interested.

"The King!" replied Lysken, with deep feeling. "And I shall be the
King's daughter!"

"Lysken Barnevelt!" cried Blanche, dropping many of her flowers in her
excitement, "art thou gone clean wood [mad], or what meanest thou?"

Lysken looked up with a smile full of meaning.

"`Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you
faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,--to the
only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty.'--Do but think,--
faultless! and, before His glory!"

Lysken's eyes were alight in a manner very rare with her. She was less
shy with her friends at Enville Court than with most people.

"So that is what thou wert thinking on!" said Blanche, in a most
deprecatory manner.

Lysken did not reply; but Clare whispered to her, "I would we might all
be presented there, Lysken."

While the young ladies were thus engaged in debate, and Rachel was
listening