'One thing more. Did I murder Humphrey Ratcliffe? Does that sin lie on my soul?'

'No, thank God!' Mary said. 'He lives; he was cruelly wounded, but God spared his life.'

There was silence now. The priest bid Mary move from the bed, and let him approach; but, before she did so, she bent over her husband and said,—

'Have you gone to the Saviour of the world for forgiveness through His precious blood, Ambrose? He alone can forgive sins.'

'I know it! I know it!' was the reply.

But the priest interfered now.

'Withdraw, my daughter, for the end is near.'

Then Mary, bending still lower, pressed a kiss upon the forehead, where the cold dews of death were gathering, and, turning towards her boy, she said,—

'Where shall I take him? Where can I go with him, my son, my son?'

There was something in Mary's self-restraint and in the pathetic tones of her voice, which moved those who stood around to pity as she repeated,—

'Where can I find a refuge with my child? I cannot remain here with him.'

One of the Brothers raised Ambrose again in his arms, and saying, 'Follow me,' he carried him to a small chamber on the upper floor, where he laid him down on a heap of straw covered with an old sacking, and said in English,—

'This is all I can do for you. Yonder room whence we came is kept for those stricken with the fever. Two of them died yesterday. We were burned out of house and home, and our oratory sacked and destroyed at Axel. We fled hither, and a troop of the Duke's army is within a mile to protect us.'

'Is there no leech at hand, no one to care for my child?'

'There was one here yester eve. He is attached to the troop I speak of, and has enow to do with the sick there. Famine and moisture have done their work, and God knows where it will end. There is a good woman at a small homestead not a mile away. She has kept us from starving, and, like many of the Hollanders, has a kind heart. I will do my best to get her to befriend you, Mistress, for I see you are in a sorry plight.'

'Even water to wet his lips would be a boon. I pray you fetch water,' she entreated.

The man disappeared, and presently returned with a rough pitcher of water and a flagon in which, he said, was a little drink prepared from herbs by the kindly Vrouw he had spoken of.

'I will seek her as quickly as other claims permit,' he said. And then Mary was left alone with her boy.

The restlessness of fever was followed by a spell of utter exhaustion, but the delirious murmurs ceased, and a light of consciousness came into those large, lustrous eyes, by which Mary knew this was indeed her son.

Otherwise, what a change from the rosy, happy child of seven, full of life and vigour, to the emaciated boy of twelve, whose face was prematurely old, and, unshaded by the once abundant hair, which had been close cropped to his head, looked ghostly and unfamiliar.

Still, he was hers once more, and she took off the ragged black gown, which had been the uniform of the scholars of the Jesuit school, and was now only fit for the fire, and taking off her own cloak, she wrapped him in it, bathed his face with water, put the herb cordial to his lips, and then, setting herself on an old chair, the only furniture in the tumbledown attic, she raised Ambrose on her knees, and, whispering loving words and prayers over him, hungered for a sign of recognition.

Evidently the poor boy's weary brain was awakened by some magnetic power to a consciousness that some lost clue of his happy childhood had been restored to him.

As his head lay against his mother's breast the rest there was apparently sweet.

He sighed as if contented, closed his eyes and slept.

Mary dare not move or scarcely breathe, lest she should disturb the slumber in which, as she gazed upon his face, the features of her lost child seemed to come out with more certain likeness to her Ambrose of past years.

For a smile played round the scarlet lips, and the long, dark fringe of the lashes resting on his cheeks, brought back the many times in the old home when she had seen them shadow the rounded rosy cheeks of his infant days.

A mother's love knows no weariness, and, as the hours passed and Ambrose still slept, Mary forgot her aching back and arms, her forlorn position in that desolate attic, even the painful ordeal she had gone through by her husband's dying bed—forgot everything but the joy that, whether for life or death, her boy was restored to her.

At last Ambrose stirred, and the smile faded from his lips. He raised his head and gazed up into the face bending over him.

'I dreamed,' he faltered; 'I dreamed I saw my mother—my mother.' He repeated the word with a feeble cry—my mother; 'but it's only a dream. I have no mother but the blessed Virgin, and she—she is so far, far away, up in Heaven.'

'Ambrose, my sweetheart, my son!' Mary said gently. 'I am not far away; I am here! Your own mother.'

'It's good of you to come down from Heaven, mother; take me—take me back with you. I am so—so weary—weary; and I can't say all the Latin prayers to you; I can't.'

'Ambrose,' poor Mary said, 'you need say no more Latin prayers; you are with me, your own mother, on earth.'

The wave of remembrance grew stronger, and, after a moment's pause, Ambrose said,—

'Ned brought me two speckled eggs. The hawk caught the poor little bird; the cruel hawk. Where am I? Ave Maria, ora pro nobis.'

'Say rather, dear child, "Dear Father in heaven, bless me, and keep me."'

'Yes, yes; that is the prayer I said by—'

'Me—me, your own mother.'

The long-deferred hope was at last fulfilled, and Mary Gifford tasted the very fruit of the tree of life, as Ambrose, with full consciousness, gazed long and earnestly at her, and said,—

'Yes, you are my mother, my own mother; not a dream.'

'Ah! say it again, my child, my child.'

'My own mother,' the boy repeated, raising his thin hand and stroking his mother's face, where tears were now running down unchecked, tears of thankfulness; such as, for many a long year, she had never shed.

With such bliss the stranger cannot intermeddle; but mothers who have had a child restored to them from the very borders of the unseen land will know what Mary Gifford felt.



CHAPTER XIV

WHAT RIGHT?

'Her look and countenance was settled, her face soft, and almost still, of one measure! without any passionate gesture or violent motion, till at length, as it were, awakening and strengthening herself, "Well," she said, "yet this is best; and of this I am sure, that, however they wrong me, they cannot overmaster God. No darkness blinds His eyes, no gaol bars Him out; to whom else should I fly but to Him for succour."'—The Arcadia.

The Countess of Pembroke was sitting in the chamber which overlooked the pleasance at Penshurst and the raised terrace above it, on a quiet autumn day of the year of 1586.

She had come to her early home to arrange the letters and papers which her mother, Lady Mary, had committed to her care on her deathbed.

There were other matters, too, which demanded her attention, and which the Earl was only too glad to help her to settle; he was now in London for that purpose.

There were many difficulties to meet in the division of the property, and Sir Henry had been so terribly hampered by the want of money, that debts sprang up on every side.

Lady Pembroke had great administrative power, and, added to her other gifts, a remarkable clearheadedness and discernment.

The sombre mourning which she wore accentuated her beauty, and set off the lovely pink-and-white of her complexion, and the radiant hair, which was, as she laughingly told her brother, 'the badge of the Sidneys.'

The profound stillness which brooded over Penshurst suited Lady Pembroke's mood, and, looking out from the casement, she saw Lucy Forrester, playing ball with her boy Will on the terrace. Lucy's light and agile figure was seen to great advantage as she sprang forward or ran backward, to catch the ball from the boy's hands. His laughter rang through the still air as, at last, Lucy missed the catch, and then Lady Pembroke saw him run down the steps leading to the pleasance below to meet George Ratcliffe, who was coming in from the entrance on that side of the park.

Lady Pembroke smiled as she saw George advance with his cap in his hand towards Lucy. His stalwart figure was set off by the short green tunic he wore, and a sheaf of arrows at his side, and a bow strapped across his broad shoulders, showed that he had been shooting in the woods.

Only a few words were exchanged, and then Lucy turned, and, leaving George with little Will Herbert, she came swiftly toward the house, and Lady Pembroke presently heard her quick, light tread in the corridor on which her room opened.

'Madam!' Lucy said, entering breathlessly, 'I bear a letter from Humphrey to his brother; it has great news for me. Mary has found her boy, and that evil man, Ambrose Gifford, is dead. Will it please you to hear the letter. I can scarcely contain my joy that Mary has found her child; he was her idol, and I began to despair that she would ever set eyes on him again.'

Lady Pembroke was never too full of her own interests to be unable to enter into those of her ladies and dependants.

'I am right glad, Lucy,' she said. 'Let me hear what good Humphrey has to say, and, perchance, there will be mention of my brothers in the letter. Read it, Lucy. I am all impatience to hear;' and Lucy read, not without difficulty, the large sheet of parchment, which had been sent, with other documents, from the seat of war by special messenger.

* * * * *

'To my good brother, George Ratcliffe, from before Zutphen,—'This to tell you that I, making an expedition by order of my master, Sir Philip Sidney, to reconnoitre the country before Zutphen, where, please God, we will in a few days meet and vanquish the enemy, fell upon a farm-house, and entering, asked whether the folk there were favourable to the righteous cause we have in hand or the contrary. Methinks there never was a joy greater than mine, when, after some weeks of despair, I found there Mistress Mary Gifford and her son! Three weeks before the day on which I write, Mistress Gifford had disappeared from the town of Arnhem, nor could we find a trace of her. I have before told you how, in the taking of Axel, I got a wound in my back from the hand of a traitor, when I had rescued his son from the burning house, where a nest of Jesuits were training young boys in their damnable doctrines.

'From the moment I was carried wounded to Arnhem I heard nought of the child, snatched by the villain from my arms, till that evening when, God be praised, I was led to the very place where he has been nursed by his mother in a sore sickness. It has been my good fortune to give her, my ever-beloved mistress, safe convoy to Arnhem, where they are, thank God, safe under the care of that God-fearing man and worthy divine, Master George Gifford.

'Here I left them, returning to Flushing, where a strong force is ready to meet the enemy, ay, and beat them back with slaughter when they advance. The Earl of Leicester is in command, but the life and soul and wisdom of the defence lie with my noble master, Sir Philip. To serve under him is sure one of the greatest honours a man can know. We have his brave brothers also at hand. Robert is scarce a whit less brave than his brother, and of Mr Thomas, it is enough to say of him he is a Sidney, and worthy of that name.

'I write in haste, for the despatches are made up, thus I can say but little of the hope within my heart, which, God grant, will now at last be not, as for so many long years, a hope in vain.

'Ambrose Gifford died of the fever, and, having made his confession, was absolved by the priest, and forgiven by that saint who has suffered from his sins! This last more for his benefit than the first, methinks! But I can no more.

'Commend me to our mother and Mistress Lucy Forrester. If I fall in the coming fight, I pray you, George, remember to protect one dearest to me on earth.—I rest your loving brother,

'HUMPHREY RATCLIFFE.'

'Post Scriptum.—The enemy is advancing, and we shall be ordered out to meet them ere sunset. God defend the right.

H. R.'

* * * * *

'What is the date of that letter, Lucy?' Lady Pembroke asked.

'The twenty-first day of September, Madam.'

'And this is the twenty-sixth. More news will sure be here ere long, and another victory assured, if it please God. May He protect my brothers in the fight. But, Lucy, I rejoice to hear of your sister's happiness in the recovery of her child; and now, in due course, I trust my brother's faithful servant and friend, Master Humphrey, will have the reward of his loyalty.'

'Yes, Madam; I hope Mary may, as you say, reward Humphrey.'

'And you, Lucy; sure Master George is worthy that you should grant him his reward also.'

Lucy's bright face clouded as the Countess said this, and a bright crimson flush rose to her cheeks.

'Dear Madam,' she said, 'I shrink from giving a meagre return for such faithful love. Sure ere a woman gives herself to a man till death, she should make certain that he is the one in all the world for her.'

'I will not contradict this, Lucy; but many women misjudge their own hearts, and—'

Lady Pembroke hesitated. Then, after a pause, she said,—

'There are some women who make their own idol, and worship it. After all, it is an unreality to them, because unattainable.'

'Nay, Madam,' Lucy said, with kindling eyes. 'I crave pardon; but the unattainable may yet be a reality. Because the sun is set on high in the heavens, it is yet our own when warmed by its beams and brightened by its shining. True, many share in this, but yet it is—we cannot help it—ours by possession when we feel its influence. Methinks,' the girl said, her face shining with a strange light—'methinks I would sooner worship—ay, and love—the unattainable, if pure, noble and good, than have part and lot with the attainable that did not fulfil my dream of all that a true knight and noble gentleman should be.'

Lady Pembroke drew Lucy towards her, and, looking into her face, said,—

'May God direct you aright, dear child! You have done me and mine good service, and the day, when it comes, that I lose you will be no day of rejoicing for me. When first you entered my household I looked on you as a gay and thoughtless maiden, and felt somewhat fearful how you would bear yourself in the midst of temptations, which, strive as we may, must beset those who form the household of a nobleman like the Earl, my husband. He makes wise choice, as far as may be, of the gentlemen attached to his service; but there is ever some black sheep in a large flock, and discretion is needed by the gentlewomen who come into daily intercourse with them. You have shown that discretion, Lucy, and it makes me happy to think that you have learned much that will be of use to you in the life which lies before you.'

'Dear Madam,' Lucy said, 'I owe you everything—more than tongue can tell; and as long as you are fain to keep me near you, I am proud to stay.'

'I feel a strange calm and peace to-day,' Lady Pembroke said, as she leaned out of the casement and looked down on the scene familiar to her from childhood. 'It is the peace of the autumn,' she said; 'and I am able to think of my father—my noble father and dear mother at rest in Paradise—gathered in like sheaves of ripe corn into the garner—meeting Ambrosia and the other younger children, whom they surrendered to God with tears, but not without hope. I am full of confidence that Philip will win fresh laurels, and I only grieve that the parents, who would have rejoiced at his success, will never know how nobly he has borne himself in this war. There will be news soon, and good Sir Francis Walsingham is sure to send it hither post haste. Till it comes, let us be patient.'

It was the afternoon of the following day that Lucy Forrester crossed the Medway by the stepping-stones, and went up the hill to Ford Manor.

It was her custom to do so whenever Lady Pembroke was at Penshurst. Her stepmother was greatly softened by time, and subdued by the yoke which her Puritan husband, who was now lord and master of the house and all in it, had laid upon her.

As Lucy turned into the lane, she met Ned coming along with a calf, which he was leading by a strong rope, to the slaughter-house in the village.

Ned's honest face kindled with smiles as he exclaimed,—

'Well-a-day, Mistress Lucy, you are more like an angel than ever. Did I ever see the like?'

'Have you heard the good news, Ned?' Lucy asked. 'Mistress Gifford has her boy safe and sound at Arnhem.'

Ned opened eyes and mouth with astonishment which deprived him of the power of speech.

'Yes,' Lucy continued, 'and she is a free woman now, Ned, for her husband is dead.'

'And right good news that is, anyhow,' Ned gasped out at last. 'Dead; then there's one rogue the less in the world. But to think of the boy. What is he like, I wonder? He was a young torment sometimes, and I've had many a chase after him when he was meddling with the chicks. The old hen nearly scratched his eyes out one day when he tapped the end of an egg to see if he could get the chick out. Lord, he was a jackanapes, surely; but we all made much of him.'

'He has been very sick with fever,' Lucy said, 'and, I dare say, marvellously changed in four years. You are changed, Ned,' Lucy said; 'you are grown a big man.'

'Ay,' Ned said, tugging at the mouth of the calf, which showed a strong inclination to kick out, and butt with his pretty head against Ned's ribs. 'Ay; and I am a man, Mistress Lucy. I have courted Avice; and—well—we were asked in church last Sunday.'

'I am right glad to hear it, Ned; and I wish you happiness. I must go forward now to the house.'

'I say!—hold! Mistress Lucy!' Ned said, with shamefaced earnestness. 'Don't think me too free and bold—but are you never going to wed? You are a bit cruel to one I could name.'

This was said with such fervour, mingled with fear lest Lucy should be offended, that she could not help smiling as she turned away, saying,—

'The poor calf will kick itself wild if you stay here much longer. So, good-day to you, good Ned; and I will send Avice a wedding gift. I have a pretty blue kerchief that will suit her of which I have no need; for we are all in sombre mourning garments for the great and good lord and lady of Penshurst.'

Lucy found her stepmother seated in the old place on the settle, but not alone. 'Her master,' as she called him with great truth, was with her, and two of 'the chosen ones,' who were drinking mead and munching cakes from a pile on the board.

He invited Lucy to partake of the fare, but she declined, and, having told her stepmother the news about Mary, she did not feel much disposed to remain.

'The boy found, do you say?' snarled her stepmother's husband. 'It would have been a cause of thankfulness if that young limb of the Evil One had never been found. You may tell your sister, Mistress Lucy, that neither her boy nor herself will ever darken these doors. We want no Papists here.'

'Nay, nay, no Papists,' echoed one of the brethren, with his mouth full of cake.

'Nay, nay,' chimed in another, as he set down the huge cup of mead after a prolonged pull. 'No Papists here to bring a curse upon the house.'

Lucy could not help feeling pity for her stepmother, who sat knitting on the settle—her once voluble tongue silenced, her mien dejected and forlorn. Lucy bent down and kissed her, saying in a low voice,—

'You are glad, I know, Mary has found her child.'

And the answer came almost in a whisper, with a scared glance in the direction of her husband and his guests,—

'Ay, ay, sure I am glad.'

Lucy lingered on the rough ground before the house, and looked down upon the scene before her, trying in vain to realise that this had ever been her home.

The wood-crowned heights to the left were showing the tints of autumn, and a soft haze lay in the valley, and brooded over the home of the Sidneys, the stately walls of the castle and the tower of the church clearly seen through the branches of the encircling trees, which the storm of a few days before had thinned of many of their leaves.

The mist seemed to thicken every minute, and as Lucy turned into the road she gave up a dim idea she had of going on to Hillside to pay her respects to Madam Ratcliffe, and hastened toward the village. The mist soon became a fog, which crept up the hillside, and, before she had crossed the plank over the river, it had blotted out everything but near objects. There seemed a weight over everything, animate and inanimate. The cows in the meadow to the right of the bridge stood with bent heads and depressed tails. They looked unnaturally large, seen through the thick atmosphere; and the melancholy caw of some belated rooks above Lucy's head, as they winged their homeward way, deepened the depression which she felt creeping over her, as the fog had crept over the country side. The village children had been called in by their mothers, and there was not the usual sound of boys and girls at play in the street. The rumble of a cart in the distance sounded like the mutter and mumble of a discontented spirit; and as Lucy passed through the square formed by the old timbered houses by the lych gate, no one was about.

The silence and gloom were oppressive, and Lucy's cloak was saturated with moisture. She entered the house by the large hall, and here, too, was silence. But in the President's Court beyond, Lucy heard voices, low and subdued. She listened, with the foreshadowing of evil tidings upon her, and yet she stood rooted to the spot, unwilling to turn fears into certainty, suspense into the reality of some calamity.

Presently a gentleman, who had evidently ridden hard, came into the hall, his cloak and buskins bespattered with mud. He bowed to Lucy, and said,—

'I am a messenger sent post haste from Mr Secretary Walsingham, with despatches for the Countess of Pembroke. I have sent for one Mistress Crawley, who, I am informed, is the head of the Countess's ladies. My news is from the Netherlands.'

'Ill news?' Lucy asked.

'Sir Philip Sidney is sorely wounded in the fight before Zutphen, I grieve to say.'

'Wounded!' Lucy repeated the word. 'Sore wounded!' Then, in a voice so low that it could scarcely be heard, she added, 'Dead! is he dead?'

'Nay, Madam; and we may hope for better tidings. For—'

He was interrupted here by the entrance of Mistress Crawley.

'Ill news!' she exclaimed. 'And who is there amongst us who dare be the bearer of it to my lady? Not I, not I! Her heart will break if Sir Philip is wounded and like to die.'

Several young maidens of Lady Pembroke's household had followed Mistress Crawley into the hall, regardless of the reproof they knew they should receive for venturing to do so.

'I cannot tell my lady—nay, I dare not!' Mistress Crawley said, wringing her hands in despair.

'Here is the despatch which Sir Francis Walsingham has committed to me,' the gentleman said. 'I crave pardon, but I must e'en take yonder seat. I have ridden hard, and I am well-nigh exhausted,' he continued, as he threw himself on one of the benches, and called for a cup of sack.

Lucy meanwhile stood motionless as a statue, her wet cloak clinging to her slender figure, the hood falling back from her head, the long, damp tresses of hair rippling over her shoulders.

'I will take the despatch to my lady,' she said, in a calm voice, 'if so be I may be trusted to do so.'



'Yes, yes!' Mistress Crawley said. 'Go—go, child, and I will follow with burnt feathers and cordial when I think the news is told,' and Mistress Crawley hurried away, the maidens scattering at her presence like a flock of pigeons.

Lucy took the despatch from the hand of the exhausted messenger, and went to perform her task.

Lady Pembroke was reading to her boy Will some passages from the Arcadia, which, in leisure moments, she was condensing and revising, as a pleasant recreation after the work of sorting the family letters and papers, and deciding which to destroy and which to keep.

When Lucy tapped at the door, Will ran to open it.

Even the child was struck by the white face which he saw before him, and he exclaimed,—

'Mistress Lucy is sick, mother.'

'No,' Lucy said, 'dear Madam,' as Lady Pembroke turned, and, seeing her, rose hastily. 'No, Madam, I am not sick, but I bring you a despatch from Sir Francis Walsingham. It is ill news, dearest lady, but not news which leaves no room for hope.'

'It is news of Philip—Philip!' Lady Pembroke said, trying with trembling fingers to break the seal and detach the silk cord which fastened the letter. 'Take it, Lucy, and—and tell me the contents. I cannot see. I cannot open it!'

Then, while the boy nestled close to his mother, as if to give her strength by putting his arms round her, Lucy obeyed her instructions, and opening it, read the Earl of Leicester's private letter, which had accompanied the official despatch, giving an account of the investment of Zutphen and the battle which had been fought before its walls. This private letter was enclosed for Lady Pembroke in that to his Right Honourable and trusted friend Sir F. Walsingham.

* * * * *

'In the mist of the morning of the 23d, my incomparably brave nephew and your brother, Philip Sidney, with but five hundred foot and seven hundred horsemen, advanced to the very walls of Zutphen.

'It was hard fighting against a thousand of the enemy. Philip's horse was killed under him, and alas! he heightened the danger by his fearless courage; for he had thrown off his cuisses to be no better equipped than Sir William Pelham, who had no time to put on his own, and, springing on a fresh horse, he went hotly to the second charge. Again there was a third onset, and our incomparable Philip was shot in the left leg.

'They brought him near me, faint from loss of blood, and he called for water. They brought him a bottle full, and he was about to raise it to his parched lips, when he espied a poor dying soldier cast greedy, ghastly eyes thereon. He forbore to drink of the water, and, handing the bottle to the poor wretch, said,—

'"Take it—thy need is greater than mine."'

* * * * *

'Oh! Philip! Philip!' Lady Pembroke said, 'in death, as in life, self-forgetting and Christ-like in your deeds.'

Lucy raised her eyes from the letter and they met those of her mistress with perfect sympathy which had no need of words.

'Doth my uncle say more, Lucy? Read on.'

* * * * *

'And,' Lucy continued, in the same low voice, which had in it a ring of mingled pride in her ideal hero and sorrow for his pain, 'my nephew would not take on himself any glory or honour when Sir William Russel, also sorely wounded, exclaimed,—

'"Oh, noble Sir Philip, never did man attain hurt so honourably or so valiantly as you," weeping over him as if he had been his mistress.

'"I have done no more," he said, "than God and England claimed of me. My life could not be better spent than in this day's service." I ordered my barge to be prepared, and, the surgeons doing all they could to stanch the blood, Philip was conveyed to Arnhem. He rests now in the house of one Madam Gruithuissens, and all that love and care can do, dear niece, shall be done by his and your sorrowing uncle,

LEICESTER.

'Pardon this penmanship. It is writ in haste, and not without tears, for verily, I seem now to know, as never before, what the world and his kindred possess in Philip Sidney.

R. L.

'To my dear niece, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, from before Zutphen, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of grace 1586. Enclosed in despatch to the Right Honourable Sir Francis Walsingham.'

* * * * *

When Lucy had finished reading, the Countess took the letter, and rising, left the room, bidding Will to remain behind.

Mistress Crawley, who was waiting in the corridor to be called in with cordials and burnt feathers, was amazed to see her lady pass out with a faint, sad smile putting aside the offered cordial.

'Nay, good Crawley, my hurt lies beyond the cure of aught but that of Him who has stricken me. I would fain be alone.'

'Dear heart!' Mistress Crawley exclaimed, as she bustled into the room where Lucy still sat motionless, while Will, with childlike intolerance of suspense, ran off to seek someone who would speak, and not sit dumb and white like Lucy. 'Dear heart! I daresay it is not a death-wound. Sure, if there is a God in heaven, He will spare the life of a noble knight like Sir Philip. He will live,' Mistress Crawley said, taking a sudden turn from despair and fear to unreasonable hope. 'He will live, and we shall see him riding into the Court ere long, brave and hearty, so don't pine like that, Mistress Lucy; and I don't, for my part, know what right you have to take on like this; have a sup of cordial, and let us go about our business.'

But Lucy turned away her head, and still sat with folded hands where Lady Pembroke had left her.

Mistress Crawley finished by emptying the silver cup full of cordial herself, and, pressing her hand to her heart, said,—'She felt like to swoon at first, but it would do no good to sit moping, and Lucy had best bestir herself, and, for her part, she did not know why she should sit there as if she were moon-struck.'

The days were long over since Mistress Crawley had ordered Lucy, in the same commanding tones with which she often struck terror into the hearts of the other maidens, threatening them with dismissal and report of their ill-conduct to Lady Pembroke.

Lucy had won the place she held by her gentleness and submission, and, let it be said, by her quickness and readiness to perform the duties required of her.

So Mistress Crawley, finding her adjurations unheeded, bustled off to see that the maidens were not gossiping in the ante-chamber, but had returned to their work.

Lucy was thus left alone with her thoughts, and, in silence and solitude, she faced the full weight of this sorrow which had fallen on the house of Sidney, yes, and on her also.

'What right had she to sit and mourn? What part was hers in this great trouble?' Mistress Crawley's words were repeated again and again in a low whisper, as if communing with her own heart.

'What right have I? No right if right goes by possession. What right? Nay, none.'

Then, with a sudden awaking from the trance of sorrow, Lucy rose, the light came back to her eyes, the colour to her cheeks.

'Right? What right? Yes, the right that is mine, that for long, long years he has been as the sun in my sky. I have gloried in all his great gifts, I have said a thousand times that there were none like him, none. I have seen him as he is, and his goodness and truth have inspirited me in my weakness and ignorance to reach after what is pure and noble. Yes, I have a right, and oh! if, indeed, I never see him again, to my latest day I shall thank God I have known him, Philip, Sir Philip Sidney, true and noble knight.'

* * * * *

There was now a sound of more arrivals in the hall, and Lucy was leaving the room, fearing, hoping, that there might be yet further tidings, when the Earl of Pembroke came hastily along the corridor.

'How fares it with my lady, Mistress Forrester? I have come to give her what poor comfort lies in my power.'

The Earl's face betrayed deep emotion and anxiety.

Will came running after his father, delighted to see him; and in this delight forgetting what had brought him.

'Father! father! I have ridden old black Joan, and I can take a low fence, father.'

'Hush now, my son, thy mother is in sore trouble, as we all must be. Take me to thy mother, boy.'

'Uncle Philip will soon be well of his wound,' the child said, 'the bullet did not touch his heart, Master Ratcliffe saith.'

The Earl shook his head.

'It will be as God pleases, boy,' and there, in the corridor, as he was hastening to his wife's apartments, she came towards him with outstretched arms.

'Oh! my husband,' she said, as he clasped her to his breast. 'Oh! pity me, pity me! and pray God that I may find comfort.'

'Yes, yes, my sweetheart,' the Earl said, and then husband and wife turned into their own chamber, Will, subdued at the sight of his mother's grief, not attempting to follow them, and Lucy was again alone.



CHAPTER XV

THE PASSING OF PHILIP

'Oh, Death, that hast us of much riches reft, Tell us at least what hast thou with it done? What has become of him whose flower here left Is but the shadow of his likeness gone? Scarce like the shadow of that which he was, Nought like, but that he like a shade did pass.

But that immortal spirit which was decked With all the dowries of celestial grace, By sovereign choice from heavenly choirs select And lineally derived from angel's race; Oh, what is now of it become aread? Ah me, can so divine a thing be dead!

Ah no, it is not dead, nor can it die, But lives for aye in blissful Paradise, Where, like a new-born babe it soft doth lie In bed of lilies wrapped in tender wise, And dainty violets from head to feet, And compassed all about with roses sweet.'

From the Lament of Sir Philip by MARY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE.

'At Arnhem, in the month of October 1586; this to my dear sister, Lucy Forrester.' This was the endorsement of a letter from Mary Gifford, which was put into Lucy's hands on the day when a wave of sorrow swept over the country as the news was passed from mouth to mouth that Sir Philip Sidney was dead.

There had been so many alternations of hope and fear, and the official reports from the Earl of Leicester had been on the hopeful side, while those of Robert Sidney and other of his devoted friends and servants, had latterly been on the side of despair.

Now Mary Gifford had written for Lucy's information an account of what had passed in these five-and-twenty days, when Sir Philip lay in the house of Madame Gruithuissens, ministered to by her uncle, Master George Gifford.

The letter was begun on the seventeenth of October, and finished a few days later, and was as follows:—

* * * * *

'After the last news that I have sent you, dear sister, it will not be a surprise to you to learn that our watching is at an end. The brave heart ceased to beat at two of the clock on this seventeenth of October in the afternoon.

'It has been a wondrous scene for those who have been near at hand to see and hear all that has passed in the upper chamber of Madame Gruithuissens' house.

'I account it a privilege of which I am undeserving, that I was suffered, in ever so small a way, to do aught for his comfort by rendering help to Madame Gruithuissens in the making of messes to tempt the sick man to eat, and also by doing what lay in my power to console those who have been beside themselves with grief—his two brothers.

'What love they bore him! And how earnestly they desire to follow in his steps I cannot say.

'Mr Robert was knighted after the battle which has cost England so dear, and my uncle saith that when he went first to his brother's side with his honour fresh upon him, Sir Philip smiled brightly, and said playfully,—

'"Good Sir Robert, we must see to it that we treat you with due respect now," and then, turning to Mr Thomas, he said, "Nor shall your bravery be forgot, Thomas, as soon as I am at Court again. I will e'en commend my youngest brother to the Queen's Highness. So we will have three knights to bear our father's name."

'At this time Sir Philip believed he should live, and, indeed, so did most of those who from day to day watching his courage and never-failing patience; the surgeon saying those were so greatly in his favour to further his recovery. But from that morning when he himself discerned the signs of approaching death, he made himself ready for that great change. Nay, Lucy, methinks this readiness had been long before assured.

'My uncle returned again and again from the dying bed to weep, as he recounted to me and my boy the holy and beautiful words Sir Philip spake.

'Of himself, only humbly; of all he did and wrote, as nothing in God's sight. His prayers were such that my uncle has never heard the like, for they seemed to call down the presence of God in the very midst of them.

'He was troubled somewhat lest his mind should fail him through grievous wrack of pain of body, but that trouble was set at rest.

'To the very end his bright intelligence shone, even more and more, till, as we now believe, it is shining in the perfectness of the Kingdom of God.

'On Sunday evening last, he seemed to revive marvellously, and called for paper and pencil. Then, with a smile, he handed a note to his brother, Sir Robert, and bade him despatch it to Master John Wier, a famous physician at the Court of the Duke of Cleves.

'This note was wrote in Latin, and begged Master Wier to come, and come quick. But soon after he grew weaker, and my good uncle asking how he fared, he replied sorrowfully that he could not sleep, though he had besought God to grant him this boon. But when my uncle reminded him of One who, in unspeakable anguish, prayed, as it would seem to our poor blind eyes, in vain, for the bitter cup did not pass, said,—

'"Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt!" he exclaimed.'

'"I am fully satisfied and resolved with this answer. No doubt it is even so."

'There were moments yet of sadness, and he reproached himself for cherishing vain hopes in sending for Master Wier, but my uncle comforted him so much that at length he pronounced these memorable words, "I would not change my joy for the empire of the world."

'I saw him from time to time as I brought to the chamber necessary things. Once or twice he waved his hand to me, and said, oh, words ne'er to be forgot,—

'"I rejoice you have your boy safe once more, Mistress Gifford. Be wary, and train him in the faith of God, and pray that he be kept from the trammels with which Papacy would enthral the soul."

'He showed great tenderness and care for Lady Frances, dreading lest she should be harmed by her constant attendance on him.

'Sweet and gentle lady! I have had the privilege of waiting on her from time to time, and of giving her what poor comfort lay in my power.

'After the settlement of his worldly affairs, Sir Philip asked to have the last ode he wrote chanted to him, but begged that all the stray leaves of the Arcadia should be gathered together and burned. He said that it was but vanity and the story of earthly loves, and he did not care to have it outlive him.

'My uncle was with him when he begged Sir Robert to leave him, for his grief could not be controlled. While the sufferer showed strength in suppressing sorrow, the strong man showed weakness in expressing it.

'Much more will be made known of these twenty-five days following the wound which caused our loss.

'For myself, I write these scanty and imperfect details for my own comfort, in knowing that they will be, in a sad sort, a comfort to you, dear sister, and, I might humbly hope, to your lady also.

'My uncle, praying by Sir Philip's side, after he had addressed his farewell to his brother, seeing him lie back on the pillow as if unconscious, said, "Sir, if you hear what I say, let us by some means know if you have inward joy and consolation of God."

'Immediately his hand, which had been thought powerless, was raised, and a clear token given to those who stood by that his understanding had not failed him.

'Once more, when asked the same question, he raised his hands with joined palms and fingers pointing upwards as in prayer—and so departed.

* * * * *

'I wrote so far, and now I have been with my boy watching the removal of all that is mortal of this great and noble one from Arnhem to Flushing, convoyed to the water's edge by twelve hundred English soldiers, trailing their swords and muskets in the dust, while solemn music played.

'The surgeons have embalmed the poor, worn body, and the Earl of Leicester has commanded that it be taken to England for burial.

'"Mother," my boy said, as he clasped my hand tightly in his, as the barge which bore the coffin away vanished in the mist hanging over the river, "mother, why doth God take hence a brave and noble knight, and leave so many who are evil and do evil instead of good?"

'How can I answer questions like to this? I could only say to my son, "There is no answer. Now we only see as in a mirror darkly; at length we shall see clearer in the Light of God, and His ways are ever just."

'Dear sister, it is strange to have the hunger of my heart satisfied by God's gift to me of my boy from the very gates of death, and yet to have that same heart oppressed with sorrow for those who are left to mourn for the brave and noble one who is passed out of our sight. Yet is that same heart full of thankfulness that I have recovered my child. It is not all satisfaction with him. Every day I have to pray that much that he has learned in the Jesuit school should be unlearned. Yet, God forbid I should be slow to acknowledge that in some things Ambrose has been trained well—in obedience, and the putting aside of self, and the mortification of appetite. Yes, I feel that in this discipline he may have reaped a benefit which with me he might have missed. But, oh! Lucy, there are moments when I long with heart-sick longing for my joyous, if wilful child, who, on a fair spring evening long ago, sat astride on Sir Philip's horse, and had for his one wish to be such another brave and noble gentleman!

'Methinks this wish is gaining strength, and that the strange repression of all natural feeling which I sometimes notice, may vanish 'neath the brighter shining of love—God's love and his mother's.

'You would scarce believe, could you see Ambrose, that he—so tall and thin, with quiet and restrained movements and seldom smiling mouth—could be the little torment of Ford Place! Four years have told on my boy, like thrice that number, and belike the terrible ravages of the fever may have taken something of his youthful spring away.

'He is tender and gentle to me, but there is reserve.

'On one subject we can exchange but few words; you will know what that subject is. From the little I can gather, I think his father was not unkind to him; and far be it from me to forget the parting words, when the soul was standing ready to take its flight into the unseen world. But oh! my sister, how wide the gulf set between him, for whom the whole world, I may say, wears mourning garb to-day—for foreign countries mourn no less than England—how wide, I say, is the gulf set between that noble life and his, of whom I dare not write, scarce dare to think.

'Yet God's mercy is infinite in Christ Jesus, and the gulf, which looks so wide to us, may be bridged over by that same infinite mercy.

'God grant it.

'This with my humble, dutiful sympathy to your dear lady, the Countess of Pembroke, for whom no poor words of man can be of comfort, from your loving sister,

MARY GIFFORD.

'Post Scriptum.—Master Humphrey Ratcliffe has proved a true friend to me, and to my boy. To him, under God, I owe my child's restoration to health, and to me.

'He is away with that solemn and sorrowful train I saw embark for Flushing, nor do I know when he will return.

M. G.'

* * * * *

'At Penshurst, in the month of February 1586,—For you, my dear sister Mary, I will write some account of the sorrowful pageant, from witnessing which I have lately returned to Penshurst with my dear and sorely-stricken mistress, and all words would fail me to tell you how heavy is her grief, and how nobly she has borne herself under its weight.

'Four long and weary months have these been since the news of Sir Philip's death came to cast a dark shadow over this country. Much there has been to harass those who are intimately connected with him. Of these troubles I need not write. The swift following of Sir Philip's death on that of his honoured father, Sir Henry Sidney, caused mighty difficulties as to the carrying out of that last will and testament in which he so nobly desired to have every creditor satisfied, and justice done.

'But, sure, no man had ever a more generous and worthy father-in-law than Sir Philip possessed in Sir Francis Walsingham. All honour be to him for the zeal and care he has shown in the settlement of what seemed at the first insurmountable mountains of difficulties.

'Of these it does not become me to speak, rather of that day, Thursday last past, when I was witness of the great ceremony of burying all that was mortal of him for whom Queen and peasant weep.

'Mary! you can scarce picture to yourself the sight which I looked on from a casement by the side of my dear mistress. All the long train of mourners taken from every class, the uplifted standard with the Cross of St George, the esquires and gentlemen in their long cloaks of mourning garb, these were a wondrous spectacle. In the long train was Sir Philip's war horse, led by a footman and ridden by a little page bearing a broken lance, followed by another horse, like the first, richly caparisoned, ridden by a boy holding a battle-axe reversed. All this I say I gazed at as a show, and my mistress, like myself, was tearless. I could not believe, nay, I could not think of our hero as connected with this pageant. Nay, nor with that coffin, shrouded in black velvet, carried by seven yeomen, and the pall borne by those gentlemen who loved him best, his dearest friends, Sir Fulke Greville, Sir Edward Dyer, Edward Watson, and Thomas Dudley.

'Next came the two brothers, Sir Robert—now Lord of Penshurst—chief mourner, and behind, poor Mr Thomas Sidney, who was so bowed down with grief that he could scarce support himself.

'Earls and nobles, headed by my Lord of Leicester, came after; and the gentlemen from the Low Countries, of whom you will have heard, and all the great city folk—Lord Mayor and Sheriffs—bringing up the rear.

'My dear mistress and I, with many other ladies of her household, having watched the long train pass us from the Minories, were conveyed by back ways to St Paul's, and, from a seat appointed us and other wives of nobles and their gentlewomen, we were present at the last scene.

'It was when the coffin, beautifully adorned with escutcheons, was placed on a bier prepared for it, that my mistress said, in a low voice, heard by me—perhaps by me only,—

'"Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur."

'These words were the motto on the coffin, and they were the words on which the preacher tried to enforce his lesson.

'Up to the moment when the double volley was fired, telling us within the church that the body rested in peace, there had been profound stillness.

'Then the murmur of a multitude sorrowing and sighing, broke upon the ear; and yet, beyond those whispered words, my lady had not made any sign.

'Now she laid her hand in mine and said,—

'"Let us go and see where they have laid him."

'I gave notice to the gentlemen in attendance that this was my lady's desire. We had to wait yet for a long space; the throng, so closely packed, must needs disperse.

'At length way was made for us, and we stood by the open grave together—my mistress, whose life had been bound up in her noble brother's, and I, to whom he had been, from my childhood's days to the present, the hero to whose excellence none could approach—a sun before whose shining other lights grew dim.

'Do not judge me hardly! Nay, Mary, you of all others will not do this. My love for him was sacred, and I looked for no return; but let none grudge it to me, for it drew me ever upwards, and, as I humbly pray, will still do so till I see him in the other life, whither he has gone.

'Throughout all this pageantry and symbols of woe which I have tried to bring before you, my dear sister, I felt only that these signs of the great grief of the whole realm were yet but vain, vain, vain.

'As in a vision, I was fain to see beyond the blackness of funeral pomp, the exceeding beauty of his soul, who, when he lay a-dying, said he had fixed his thoughts on these eternal beauties, which cheered his decaying spirits, and helped him to take possession of the immortal inheritance given to him by, and in Christ.

'"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; blessed be those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

'I have finished the task I set myself to do for your edification, dearest sister. Methought I could scarce get through it for tears, but these did not flow at my will. Not till this morning, when I betook myself to the park, where all around are signs of a springing new life, and memories of Sir Philip in every part, did these tears I speak of have their free way. All things wakening into life, buds swelling on the stately trees he loved; birds singing, for the time to pair is come; dew sparkling like the lustre of precious stones on every twig and blade of grass, daisies with golden eyes peeping up between. Life, life, everywhere quickening life, and he who loved life, and to see good days, can walk no more in the old dear paths of his home, which he trod with so graceful and alert a step, his smile like the sunshine lying on the gate of the President's Court, under which he that went out on the November morning in all the glory of his young manhood, shall pass in no more for ever.

'As I thought of seeing him thus, with the light on his bright hair and glistening armour, as he took his infant child in his arms and bade her farewell, I wept, not bitter tears, but those God sends to us as a blessing when the heart desires some ease of its burden.

'It may be that you will care to read what I have written to the boy Ambrose. Bid him from me to remember his old desire to be such another brave and goodly knight as Sir Philip Sidney, and strive to follow him in all loyal service to his God, his Queen, and his kindred.

'I am thinking often, Mary, of your return to this country. Will it never come to pass? You told me in your letter in which you gave me those particulars of Sir Philip's death, that I should scarce believe that Ambrose was the child I knew at the old home of Ford Place. And scarce will you believe, when we meet, as meet I pray we shall, I am the same Lucy of days past. Ever since that time of your grief and sickness, I have changed. I look back with something which is akin to pity on the vain child who thought fine clothes and array the likest to enhance the fair face and form which maybe God has given me. Ay, Mary, I have learned better now. I should have been a dullard, in sooth, had I not learned much in the companionship graciously granted me by my honoured mistress. To be near her is an education, and she has been pleased in many ways to instruct me, not only in the needlecraft and tapestry work in which she excels, but also in opening for me the gates of knowledge, and in rehearsing in my ear the beautiful words of Scripture, and the Psalms in verse, as well as the poems of Mr Spenser, and, chiefest of all, of those works in prose and verse which Sir Philip has left behind. Sure, these will never die, and will tell those who come after us what we possessed and lost!

'Yet, after all, as my mistress saith again and yet again, it was not by all his deeds of valour and his gifts of learning that he stands so high forever amongst men. No, nor not by his death and the selfless act which men are speaking of on all sides, as he lay in the first agony of his sore wound on the battlefield of Zutphen. Not by these only will his name live, but by his life, which, for purity and faith, virtue and godliness, loyalty and truth, may be said to be without peer in this age of which he was so fair an ornament.

'I dare not say more, lest even you charge me with rhapsody.

'I rest, dear Mary, in all loving and tender affection, your sister,

LUCY FORRESTER.

'To my honoured sister, Mary Gifford, at the house of Master Gifford, in Arnhem, February 1586. From Penshurst Place, in the county of Kent.'



CHAPTER XVI

FOUR YEARS LATER—1590

'My true love hath my heart and I have his, By just exchange, one for the other given. I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss; There never was a better bargain driven.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one, My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides; He loves my heart, for once it was his own, I cherish his, because in me it bides.'

The sound of these words by Sir Philip Sidney, sung in a sweet melodious voice, was borne upon the summer air of a fair June evening in the year 1590.

It came through the open casement from the raised seat of the parlour at Hillbrow, where once Mistress Ratcliffe had sat at her spinning-wheel, casting her watchful eyes from time to time upon the square of turf lying between the house and the entrance gate, lest any of her maidens should be gossiping instead of working.

Mistress Ratcliffe had spun her last thread of flax more than a year ago, and another mistress reigned in her place in the old house upon the crest of the hill above Penshurst.

As the last words of the song were sung, and only the lingering chords of the viol were heard, making a low, sweet refrain, a man who had been listening unseen to the music under the porch, with its heavy overhanging shield of carved stone, now came to the open window, which, though raised some feet above the terrace walk beneath, was not so high but that his head appeared on a level with the wide ledge of the casement.

Lucy was unconscious of his presence till he said,—

'I would fain hear that song again, Lucy.'

'Nay,' she said with a smile; 'once is enough.'

'Did you think of me as you sang?' he asked.

'Perhaps,' she said, with something of her old spirit. 'Perhaps; but you must know there is another who hath my heart. I have been singing him to sleep, and I pray you do not come in with a heavy tramp of your big boots and wake him. He has been fractious to-day. Speak softly,' she said, as George exclaimed,—

'The young rascal! I warrant you have near broken your back carrying him to and fro.'

'My back is not so easy to break; but, George, when will the travellers come. I have made all things ready these two days and more.'

'They may arrive any moment now,' George said, and then his bright handsome face disappeared from the window, and in another moment he had come as quietly as was possible for him, into the sunny parlour, now beautified by silken drapery, worked by Lucy's clever fingers, and sweet with the fragrance of flowers in the beau-pot on the hearth and fresh rushes on the floor.

In a large wooden cradle lay his first-born son—named in memory of one whom neither husband nor wife could ever forget—Philip. The child was small and delicate, and Lucy had tasted not only the sweets of motherhood, but its cares.

Yet little Philip was very fair to look upon. He had the refined features of his mother, and though his cheeks wanted something of the roundness and rosiness of healthful infancy, he was, in his parents' eyes, as near perfection as first-born children are ever apt to be thought!

George paused by the cradle, which was raised on high rockers, and, bending over it, said,—

'He is sound asleep now,' just touching the little hand lying outside the coverlet with his great fingers as gently as his mother could have done.

'I won't be jealous of him, eh, Lucy? He is mine as well as yours, sweetheart.'

'That is a truism,' Lucy said. 'Now, come into the window-seat and talk low—if you must talk—and let us watch for those who are, I pray God, drawing near.'

George unfastened his leather pouch which was slung over his shoulder, and put the bow and quiver against the corner of the bay window.

Then he threw his huge form at his wife's feet on the dais, and said,—

'Do not be too eager for their coming, sweetheart. I half dread their entrance into this house, which, perchance may disturb our bliss.'

'Fie for shame!' Lucy replied, 'as if Mary could ever be aught but a joy and a blessing. I am ready to blush for you, George.'

'They will be grand folk, grander than we are, that is, than I am! Humphrey knighted, and Mary Dame Ratcliffe. Then there is the boy! I am not sure as to the boy. I confess I fear the early training of the Jesuits may have left a mark on him.'

'Now, I will listen to no more growlings, George,' his wife said, laying her small fair hand on the thick masses of her husband's hair, and smoothing it from his forehead. 'You will please to give the coming guests a hearty welcome, and be proud to call them brother, sister, and nephew.'

'Nay,' George said. 'Ambrose is no nephew of mine!'

'To think of such folly, when, but a minute agone, you said what is mine is yours. Ambrose is my nephew, I'd have you to remember, sir.'

'As you will, sweet wife! as you will; but, Lucy, when you see Humphrey ride up with a train of gentlemen, it may be, and my lady with her gentlewomen, will you not be sorry that you left everything to be the wife of a country yeoman, who is unversed in fine doings, and can give you so little?'

'You give me all I want,' Lucy said; and this time, as she smoothed back the rebellious curls, she bent and kissed the broad brow which they shaded. 'You give me all I want,' she repeated—'your heart!'

Soon there was a sound of horses' feet, and, with an exclamation, 'Here at last!' George went to the gate to receive the guests, and Lucy hurried to the porch.

'The noise and bustle may rouse little Philip,' she said to one of her maids; 'watch in the parlour till I return.'

In another moment Humphrey had grasped his brother's hand, and, turning, lifted his wife from the pillion on which she had ridden with her son.

'Mary! Mary!' and Lucy ran swiftly to meet her sister, and held her in a long embrace.

A meeting after years of separation is always mingled with joy something akin to pain, and it was not till the first excitement of this reunion was over that the joy predominated.

Mary was greatly changed; her hair was white; and on her sweet face there were many lines of suffering. Lucy led her into the parlour, and she could only sink down upon the settle by her side, and hold her hand in hers, looking with wistful earnestness into her face.

'So fair still! and happy, dearest child!' Mary whispered in a low voice. 'Happy! and content?'

'Yes,' Lucy replied proudly. 'And you, Mary, you are happy now?'

'Blest with the tender care of my husband. Yes; but, Lucy, I bring him but a poor reward for all his patient love.'

'Nay, he does not think so, I'll warrant,' Lucy said. 'You will soon be well and hearty in your native air, and the colour will come back to your cheeks and the brightness to your eyes.'

'To rival yours, dear child! Nay, you forget how time, as well as sickness and sorrow, have left its mark on me.'

'And Ambrose?' Lucy asked. 'You have comfort in him?'

'Yes,' Mary said. 'Yes, but, dear heart, the vanished days of childhood return not. Ambrose is old for his sixteen years; and, although dear, dear as ever, I am prone to look back on those days at Ford Manor, when he was mine, all mine, before the severance from me changed him.'

'Sure he is not a Papist now?' Lucy said. 'I trust not.'

'Nay, he is not professedly a Papist, but the teaching of those four years sowed seed. Yet he loves me, and is a dutiful son to me, and to his—his new father. I ought to be satisfied.'

Little Philip now turned in his cradle, awoke by the entrance of the two brothers and Ambrose, who had been to the stables to see that the grooms and horses were well cared for.

Lucy raised Philip in her arms, and Mary said,—

'Ay! give him to me, sweet boy. See, Ambrose, here is your cousin; nay, I might say your brother, for it is a double tie between you.'

The tall stripling looked down on the little morsel of humanity with a puzzled expression.

'He is very small, methinks,' he said.

This roused Lucy's maternal vanity.

'Small, forsooth! Do you expect a babe of eight months to be a giant. He is big enow for my taste and his father's. Too big at times, I vow, for he is a weight to carry.'

Ambrose felt he had made a mistake, and hastened to add,—

'He has wondrous large eyes;' and then he bent over his mother and said, 'You should be resting in your own chamber, mother.'

'Yes; well spoken, my boy,' Humphrey said. 'Mary is not as hearty as I could desire,' he added, turning to George. 'Maybe Lucy will take her to her chamber, and forgive her if she does not come to sup in the hall.'

Lucy gave little Philip to his father, who held him in awkward fashion, till the nurse came to the rescue and soothed his faint wailing by the usual nonsense words of endearment which then, as now, nurses seem to consider the proper language in which to address babies.

When the two brothers were alone together that night, Humphrey said,—

'It is all prosperous and well with you now, George. You have got your heart's desire, and your fair lady looks fairer, ay, and happier than I ever saw her.'

'Ay, Humphrey, it is true. At times I wonder at my own good fortune. I had my fears that she would hanker after fine things and grand folk, but it is not so. She went with the boy to Wilton two months agone to visit the Countess of Pembroke, who holds her in a wonderful affection. The boy is her godson, and she has made him many fine gifts. I was fearful Lucy would find this home dull after a taste of her old life; but, Heaven bless her, when I lifted her from the horse with the child on her return, she kissed me and said, "I am right glad to get home again." I hope, Humphrey, all is well and prosperous with you also?'

'I may say yes as regards prosperity, beyond what I deserve. I have a place about the Court, under my Lord Essex, and I was knighted, as you know, for what they were pleased to call bravery in the Armada fight. After we lost that wise and noble gentleman, Sir Philip Sidney, everything went crooked under the Earl of Leicester, and Spain thought she was going to triumph and crush England with the Armada. But God defended the right, and the victory is ours. Spain is humbled now. Would to God Sir Philip Sidney had lived to see it and share the glory.'

George listened as his brother spoke, with flashing eyes, of the final discomfiture of Spain, and then noticed how his whole manner changed to softness and sadness, as he went on to say,—

'My heart's desire in the possession of the one woman whom I ever loved is granted, but, George, I hold her by a slender thread. I have brought her here with the hope that she may gather strength, but, as you must see, she is but the shadow of her old self. The good old man at Arnhem counselled me to take her to her native air, and God grant it may revive her. She is saint-like in her patience and in her love for me. Heaven knows I am not worthy of her, yet let me bless God I have her to cherish, and, by all means that in me lies, fan the flame of her precious life, trusting to see it burn brightly once more. But, George, I fear more than I hope. What will all honours and Court favour be to me if I lose her?'

'You will keep her,' George said, in the assured tone that those who are happy often use when speaking to others who are less happy than themselves. 'You will keep her, Humphrey, she shall have milk warm from one of my best cows, and feed on the fat of the land. Oh! we will soon see the Dame Mary Ratcliffe fit to go to Court and shine there.'

Humphrey shook his head.

'That is the last thing Mary would desire.' Then changing his tone, he went on: 'What think you of Ambrose, George?'

'He is big enow, and handsome. Is he amenable and easy to control?'

'I have no cause to find fault with him; he lacks spirit somewhat, and has taken a craze to be a scholar rather than a soldier. He has been studying at Goettingen, and now desires to enter Cambridge. The old ambition to be a soldier and brave knight, like Sir Philip Sidney, died out during those four years spent in the Jesuit school, and he is accounted marvellously clever at Latin and Greek.'

'Humph,' George said. 'Let us hope there is no lurking Jesuitry in him. The worse for him if there is, for the Queen is employing every means to run the poor wretches to earth. The prisons are chock full of them, and the mass held in abhorrence.'

'Ambrose was but a child when with the Jesuits—scarce twelve years old when I came upon him, and recovered him for his mother. No, no, I do not fear Papacy for him, though, I confess, I would rather see him a rollicking young soldier than the quiet, reserved fellow he is. One thing is certain, he has a devotion for his mother, and for that I bless the boy. He considers her first in everything, and she can enter into his learning with a zest and interest which I cannot.'

'Learning is not everything,' George said, 'let me hope so, at any rate, as I am no scholar.'

'No; but it is a great deal when added to godliness,' Humphrey replied. 'We saw that in the wonderful life of Sir Philip Sidney. It was hard to say in what he excelled most, learning or statesmanship or soldiering. Ay, there will never be one to match him in our time, nor in any future time, so I am ready to think. There's scarce a day passes but he comes before me, George, and scarce a day but I marvel why that brilliant sun went down while it was high noonday. Thirty-one years and all was told.'

'Yes,' George said; 'but though he is dead he is not forgotten, and that's more than can be said of thousands who have died since he died—four years ago; by Queen and humble folk he is remembered.'

George Ratcliffe's prophecy seemed likely to be fulfilled. Mary Gifford gained strength daily, and very soon she was able to walk in the pleasance by Hillside Manor, which George had laid out for Lucy, in those long waiting days when he gathered together all that he thought would please her in the 'lady's chamber' he had made ready for her, long before his dream of seeing her in it was realised.

Gradually Mary was able to extend her walks, and it was on one evening in July that she told Lucy she should like to walk down to Ford Manor.

Lucy remonstrated, and said she feared if she allowed her to go so far Humphrey and Ambrose, who had gone away to London for a few days, would be displeased with her for allowing it.

'I would fain go there with you and see Ned and old Jenkins. The newcomers have kept on their services, I hope?'

'Yes, all things are the same, except that the poor old stepmother and her ill-conditioned husband have left it, and are living in Tunbridge. He preaches and prays, and spends her savings, and, let us hope, he is content. The dear old place was going to wrack and ruin, so Sir Robert's orders came that they were to quit.'

'Poor old place! To think,' Lucy said, 'that I could ever feel an affection for it, but it is so nevertheless.'

So, in the golden light of sunset, the two sisters stood by the old thorn tree on the bit of ground in front of Ford Manor once more.

Ned and Jenkyns had bidden them welcome, and, by the permission of the present owners of the farm, they had gone through the house, now much improved by needful repairs and better furnishing. But, whatever changes there were in the house and its inhabitants, the smiling landscape stretched out before the two sisters as they stood by the crooked back of the old thorn tree was the same. The woodlands, in the glory of the summer prime, clothed the uplands; the tower of the church, the stately walls of the Castle of Penshurst, the home of the noble race of Sidney, stood out amidst the wealth of foliage of encircling trees as in years gone by. The meadows were sloping down to the village, where the red roofs of the cottages clustered, and the spiral columns of thin blue smoke showed where busy housewives were preparing the evening meal at the wood fire kindled on the open hearth. The rooks were flying homewards with their monotonous caw. From a copse, just below Ford Manor, the ring-doves were repeating the old, old song of love. As Mary Gifford stood with her face turned towards the full light of the evening sky, she looked again to Lucy like the Mary of old. Neither spoke; their hearts were too full for words, but they clasped each other's hands in a silence more eloquent than speech.

Both sisters' thoughts were full of the past rather than the present.

Mary seemed to see before her the little fair-haired boy who had been so eager to mount Sir Philip's horse, and Sir Philip, with his radiant smile and gracious kindliness, so ready to gratify the boy's desire, as he set him on the saddle.

And Mary heard, too, again the ringing voice as little Ambrose said,—

'I would fain be a noble gentleman and brave soldier like Mr Philip Sidney. I would like to ride with him far, far away.'

She recalled now the pang those words had caused her, and how she dreaded the parting which came all too soon, and had been so bitter to her. Now, she had her son restored to her, but she felt, as how many mothers have felt since, a strange hunger of the soul, for her vanished child! Ambrose, quiet and sedate, and eager to be an accomplished scholar, tall, almost dignified, for his sixteen years, was indeed her son, and she could thank God for him. Yet she thought with a strange regret, of the days when he threw his arms round her in a rough embrace, or trotted chattering by her side as she went about the farm, or, still sweeter memory, murmured in his sleep her name, and looked up at her with a half-awakened smile, as he found her near, and felt her kisses on his forehead.

From these thoughts Mary was roused by Ambrose himself,—

'Mother,' he said, 'this is too far for you to walk. You should not have ventured down the hill. We have returned to find the house empty; and my father is in some distress when he heard you had come so far.'

Ambrose spoke as if he were constituted his mother's caretaker; and Lucy, laughing, said,—

'You need not look so mighty grave about it, Ambrose; your mother is not tired. Forsooth, one would think you were an old man giving counsel, rather than a boy.'

Ambrose disliked of all things to be called a boy; and, since his first remark about the baby Philip, there had often been a little war of words between aunt and nephew.

'Boys may have more wits than grown folk sometime,' he replied. 'Here comes my father, who does not think me such a fool as, perchance, you do, Aunt Lucy. He has brought a horse to carry my mother up the steep hill.'

'Well, I will leave her to your double care,' Lucy said. 'I see George follows a-foot. We will go up the hill path, and be at home before you, I'll warrant.' She ran gaily away to meet George; and as Mary was lifted on the pillion by Humphrey, Ambrose taking his place by his mother, he turned in the opposite direction, and, following Lucy and her husband, was soon out of sight.

Mother and son rode slowly along the familiar path which leads into the high road from Penshurst.

The glow of sunset was around them, and the crimson cloth mantle Mary wore shone in the westering light. So they pass out of sight, and the shadows gather over the landscape, and evening closes in. As a dream when one awaketh is the history of the past, and the individual lives which stand out in it are like phantoms which we strive, perhaps in vain, to quicken into life once more, and clothe them with the vivid colours for which imagination may lend its aid. Of the central figure of this story of the spacious times of great Elizabeth, we may say—with the sister who loved him with no common love—

'Ah, no! his spirit is not dead—nor can it die, But lives for aye in blissful Paradise, Where, like a new-born babe, it soft doth lie, In bed of lilies—wrapped in tender wise, And compassed all about with roses sweet, And dainty violets from head to feet.'



THE END.



EDINBURGH

COLSTON AND COMPANY

PRINTERS



MRS MARSHALL'S HISTORICAL NOVELS.

* * * * *

IN THE SERVICE OF RACHEL, LADY RUSSELL. With Illustrations. Fourth Thousand.

'This is another of those admirable historical romances in which Mrs Marshall makes the past speak to the present.'—Spectator.

WINIFREDE'S JOURNAL. A Story of Exeter and Norwich in the Days of Bishop Hall. With Illustrations. Fourth Thousand. Price 5s., cloth.

'Captivating in style, graphic in effect, and high in tone.'—Guardian.

WINCHESTER MEADS IN THE DAYS OF BISHOP KEN. Sixth Thousand. With Eight Illustrations. Price 5s., cloth.

'Mrs Marshall has produced another of her pleasant stories of old times.'—Saturday Review.

UNDER SALISBURY SPIRE IN THE DAYS OF GEORGE HERBERT. With Illustrations. Ninth Thousand. Price 5s., cloth.

'A charming study of life and character in the seventeenth century.'—Athenaeum.

ON THE BANKS OF THE OUSE. A Tale of the Times of Newton and Cowper. With Illustrations. Fourth Thousand. Price 5s., cloth.

'It is refreshing to read a book so earnest as this. The style is simple and clear.'—Academy.

IN FOUR REIGNS. The Recollections of ALTHEA ALLINGHAM. With Illustrations. Fifth Thousand. Price 5s., cloth.

'Seldom does one meet with a book of such sympathetic and touching character.'—Morning Post.

UNDER THE MENDIPS. A Tale of the Times of More. With Illustrations. Sixth Thousand. Price 5s., cloth.

'A charming story.'—Athenaeum.

IN THE EAST COUNTRY with Sir Thomas Browne, Knight. With Illustrations. Fifth Thousand. Price 5s., cloth.

'This is a charming and pretty story of life in Norwich two hundred years ago.'—Spectator.

IN COLSTON'S DAYS. A Story of Old Bristol. With Illustrations. Fifth Thousand. Price 5s., cloth.

'The illustrations are excellent pictures of Bristol in the old days, and the book itself is particularly pleasant reading.'—Christian World.

* * * * *

LONDON: SEELEY & CO., LIMITED, ESSEX ST., STRAND.

NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION OF

MRS MARSHALL'S EARLIER WORKS.

Price 3s. 6d. cloth.

* * * * *

LADY ALICE. MRS MAINWARING'S JOURNAL. HEIGHTS AND VALLEYS. VIOLET DOUGLAS. CHRISTABEL KINGSCOTE. HELEN'S DIARY. BROTHERS AND SISTERS. NOWADAYS. DOROTHY'S DAUGHTERS. MILLICENT LEGH.

* * * * *

MRS MARSHALL'S POPULAR SERIES.

Price 1s. 6d. cloth. 1s. sewed.

* * * * *

A LILY AMONG THORNS. BOSCOMBE CHINE. THE TWO SWORDS. HER SEASON IN BATH. THE TOWER ON THE CLIFF. THE OLD GATEWAY. BRISTOL DIAMONDS. UP AND DOWN THE PANTILES. A ROMANCE OF THE UNDERCLIFF. BRISTOL BELLS.

* * * * *

LONDON: SEELEY & CO., LIMITED, ESSEX ST., STRAND.

THE END