ast thee off, even if, as I suspect, yonder lady would
fain be quit of thee."

"Oh no!" burst from Cicely, then, shocked at having committed the
offence of interrupting him, she added, "Dear sir, I crave your pardon,
but, indeed, she is all fondness and love."

"Then what means this passion?" he asked, looking from one to the other.

"It means only that the child's senses and spirits are overcome," said
Susan, "and that she scarce knows how to take this discovery. Is it not
so, sweetheart?"

"Oh, sweet mother, yes in sooth. You will ever be mother to me indeed!"

"Well said, little maid!" said Richard. "Thou mightest search the
world over and never hap upon such another."

"But she oweth duty to the true mother," said Susan, with her hand on
the girl's neck.

"We wot well of that," answered her husband, "and I trow the first is
to be secret."

"Yea, sir," said Cis, recovering herself, "none save the very few who
tended her, the Queen at Lochleven, know who I verily am. Such as were
aware of the babe being put on board ship at Dunbar, thought me the
daughter of a Scottish archer, a Hepburn, and she, the Queen my mother,
would, have me pass as such to those who needs must know I am not
myself."

"Trust her for making a double web when a single one would do,"
muttered Richard, but so that the girl could not hear.

"There is no need for any to know at present," said Susan hastily,
moved perhaps by the same dislike to deception; "but ah, there's that
fortune-telling woman."

Cis, proud of her secret information, here explained that Tibbott was
indeed Cuthbert Langston, but not the person whose password was "beads
and bracelets," and that both alike could know no more than the story
of the Scottish archer and his young wife, but they were here
interrupted by the appearance of Diccon, who had been sent by my Lord
himself to hasten them at the instance of the Queen. Master Richard
sent the boy on with his mother, saying he would wait and bring Cis, as
she had still to compose her hair and coif, which had become somewhat
disordered.

"My maiden," he said, gravely, "I have somewhat to say unto thee. Thou
art in a stranger case than any woman of thy years between the four
seas; nay, it may be in Christendom. It is woeful hard for thee not to
be a traitor through mere lapse of tongue to thine own mother, or else
to thy Queen. So I tell thee this once for all. See as little, hear
as little, and, above all, say