en,
and how she had been conveyed across the lake while only a few hours
old, after being hastily baptized by the name of Bride, one of the
patron saints of Scotland. She had been nursed in a cottage for a few
weeks till the Queen had made her first vain attempt to escape, after
which Mary had decided on sending her with her nurse to Dumbarton
Castle, whence Lord Flemyng would despatch her to France. The Abbess
was implored to shelter her, in complete ignorance of her birth, until
such time as her mother should resume her liberty and her throne. "Or
if," the poor Queen said, "I perish in the hands of my enemies, you
will deal with her as my uncles of Guise and Lorraine think fit, since,
should her unhappy little brother die in the rude hands of yonder
traitors, she may bring the true faith back to both realms."

"Ah!" cried Susan, with a sudden gasp of dismay, as she bethought her
that the child was indeed heiress to both realms after the young King
of Scots. "But has there been no quest after her? Do they deem her
lost?"

"No doubt they do. Either all hands were lost in the Bride of Dunbar,
or if any of the crew escaped, they would report the loss of nurse and
child. The few who know that the little one was born believe her to
have perished. None will ever ask for her. They deem that she has
been at the bottom of the sea these twelve years or more."

"And you would still keep the knowledge to ourselves?" asked his wife,
in a tone of relief.

"I would I knew it not myself!" sighed Richard. "Would that I could
blot it out of my mind."

"It were far happier for the poor maid herself to remain no one's child
but ours," said Susan.

"In sooth it is! A drop of royal blood is in these days a mere drop of
poison to them that have the ill luck to inherit it. As my lord said
the other day, it brings the headsman's axe after it."

"And our boy Humfrey calls himself contracted to her!"

"So long as we let the secret die with us that can do her no ill.
Happily the wench favours not her mother, save sometimes in a certain
lordly carriage of the head and shoulders. She is like enough to some
of the Scots retinue to make me think she must take her face from her
father, the villain, who, someone told me, was beetle-browed and
swarthy."

"Lives he still?"

"So 'tis thought, but somewhere in prison in the north. There have
been no tidings of his death; but my Lady Queen, you'll remember,
treats the marriage as