as many metamorphoses as there
be in Ovidius Naso, coming privily forth from Sir Francis Walsingham's
closet, but he would not listen, and declared that Langston was holding
Mr. Secretary in play."

"Deceiving and being deceived," sighed his father. "That is ever the
way, my son! Remember that if thou playest false, other men will play
falser with thee and bring thee to thy ruin. I would not leave thee
here save that the gentlemen pensioners are a more honest and manly
sort of folk than yonder gentlemen with their state craft, wherein they
throw over all truth and honour as well as mercy."

This conversation took place as the father and son were making their
way to a house in Westminster, where Antony Babington's wife was with
her mother, Lady Ratcliffe. It had been a match made by Lady
Shrewsbury, and it was part of Richard's commission to see and confer
with the family. It was not a satisfactory interview. The wife was a
dull childish little thing, not yet sixteen; and though she cried, she
had plainly never lived in any real sympathy or companionship with her
husband, who had left her with her parents, while leading the life of
mingled amusement and intrigue which had brought him to his present
state; and the mother, a hard-featured woman, evidently thought herself
cheated and ill used. She railed at Babington and at my Lady Countess
by turns; at the one for his ruinous courses and neglect of her
daughter, at the other for having cozened her into giving her poor
child to a treacherous Papist, who would be attainted in blood, and
thus bring her poor daughter and grandchild to poverty. The old lady
really seemed to have lost all pity for her son-in-law in indignation
on her daughter's account, and to care infinitely less for the saving
of his life than for the saving of his estate. Nor did the young wife
herself appear to possess much real affection for poor Antony, of whom
she had seen very little. There must have been great faults on his
side; yet certainly Richard felt that there was some excuse for him in
the mother-in-law, and that if the unfortunate young man could have
married Cicely his lot might have been different. Yet the good Captain
felt all the more that if Cis had been his own he still would never
have given her to Babington.

CHAPTER XXXII.

WESTMINSTER HALL.

Beneath the noble roof of Westminster Hall, with the morning sun
streaming in high aloft, at seven in the morning of the