ou, and bless you.'

Lucy quickly recovered her spirits; her heart was too full of delighted
anticipation to have room for any prolonged fear about her sister, though
her pale, terror-struck face, seen in the twilight, and her agonised appeal
to her to swear what she asked, made her say, as she lay down on her low
truckle bed in the little attic chamber next her sister's,--

'Sure Mary must know something of that man. Perhaps he was a boon companion
of her wicked husband. Ah, me! it would be a different world if all men
were brave and good and noble like--'

Before the name had taken shape on her lips, Lucy was asleep, and in her
dreams there were no dark strangers with cruel black eyes and sinister
smiles, but goodly knights, in glistening armour, riding out against their
adversaries, and goodlier and nobler than the rest, before whose lance all
others fell, while the air rang with the shouts of victory, was Mr Philip
Sidney.

* * * * *

Sunday morning dawned fair and bright. The bells of Penshurst church were
chiming for matins, when Mary Gifford, leading her boy by the hand, stood
with Lucy under the elm tree by the timbered houses by the lych gate,
returning the kindly greetings of many neighbours and acquaintances.

Overhead the great boughs of the elm tree were quivering in the soft
breeze. The buds, scarcely yet unfolded into leaf, were veiled with tender
green, while a sheaf of twigs on the trunk were clothed in emerald, in
advance of the elder branches, and making the sombre bole alive with
beauty, as the sunbeams sought them out, and cast their tiny, flickering
shadows on the ground.

The village people always waited in the churchyard, or by the lych gate
till the household from the castle came through the door leading from the
Park to the church, and this morning their appearance was looked forward to
with more than usual interest. Not only was Lady Mary expected, but the
Countess of Pembroke and her ladies, with Mr Sidney, and his young
brothers, Robert and Thomas, were known to be of the party.

[Illustration: THE LYCH GATE, PENSHURST.]

Sir Henry Sidney was seldom able to leave Ludlow for a peaceful sojourn in
his beautiful home, and Lady Mary had sometimes to make the journey from
Wales without him, to see that all things in the house were well ordered,
and to do her best to make the scanty income stretch out to meet the
necessary claims upon it.

When two of the