sir, to mount a horse again. If I live to be three score, I pray
Heaven I may never sit a-horseback again.'

CHAPTER IX

ACROSS THE FORD

'Farewell to you! my hopes, my wonted waking dreams,
Farewell, sometimes enjoyed joy, eclipsed are thy beams.
Farewell self-pleasing thoughts! which quietness brings forth,
And farewell friendship's sacred league! uniting minds of worth.'

SIR F. GREVILLE, 1591.

Lucy Forrester was mending the lace of one of Lady Pembroke's ruffs which
had been torn at the edge on the previous day, when a page brought in
Humphrey's letter, saying, 'For Mistress Forrester.'

'Hand it hither,' Mistress Crawley said. 'It will keep till that lace is
mended, and I'd have you to know, Mistress Lucy, my lady is very careful
that there should be no billets passing between the young gentlewomen of
her household and idle gallants about the Court. A pack of rubbish is in
that letter, I'll warrant; some rhymes about your bright eyes and cherry
cheeks, or some such stuff.'

'If you please, Madam, I desire to have my letter, and, if you will not
give it to me, I will go to my lady and tell her you refuse to let me have
it.'

'You little sauce-box! Do you think my lady has nought to do but attend to
the whimsies of chits like you? Go on with your work. Do you hear?'

Lucy was burning with indignation, and, moreover, her curiosity was
awakened to know who had written to her, and what were the contents of the
letter.

The spirit which had rebelled against her stepmother now asserted itself,
and she pushed back the stool on which she was sitting with such violence
that it fell with a crash on the floor, and, as it fell, knocked against
the spindle at which another of the maidens was sitting, and the thread
snapped in two.

In the confusion which ensued Lucy escaped, and went into the gallery which
ran round the house, and meeting Mr Sidney, she stopped short.

'Whither away, Mistress Lucy? My sister wishes to see you.'

'And I wish to see my lady,' Lucy said, her breast heaving with suppressed
excitement. 'I was running to seek her.'

Mistress Crawley now appeared, and, seizing Lucy by the shoulder,
exclaimed,--

'You impudent child! How dare you stop Mr Sidney? Return at once, or I'll
have you dismissed.'

'Gently, good Mistress Crawley,' Philip Sidney said. 'It was I who was
seeking Mistress Lucy. Allow me to take her to the Countess's apartment,
where I fear ill ne