“But you will not speak of it.  If I were turned away my father would beat me.  Nay, I know not what he might not do to me.  You will not tell, dear darling Portia, and I will love you for ever.”

“I have no call to tell,” said Anne coldly, but she was disgusted and weary, and moreover not at all sure that she, as the other Protestant rocker, and having been in the Park on that same day, was not credited with some of the mischievous gossip that had passed.

“There, Portia, that is what you get by walking with that stupid Humphreys,” said Oriana.  “She knows no better than to blab to any one who will be at the trouble to seem sweet upon her, though she may get nothing by it.”

“Would it be better if she did?” asked Anne.

“Oh well, we must all look out for ourselves, and I am sure there is no knowing what may come next.  But I hear we are to move to Windsor as soon as the child is strong enough, so as to be farther out of reach of the Cockpit tongues.”

This proved to be true, but the Prince and his suite were not lodged in the Castle itself, a house in the cloisters being thought more suitable, and here the Queen visited her child daily, for since that last alarm she could not bear to be long absent from him.  Such emissaries as Colonel Sands did not again appear, but after that precedent Lady Strickland had become much more unwilling to allow any of those under her authority to go out into any public place, and the rockers seldom got any exercise except as swelling the Prince’s train when he was carried out to take the air.

Anne looked with longing eyes at the Park, but a ramble there was a forbidden pleasure.  She could not always even obtain leave to attend St. George’s Chapel; the wish was treated as a sort of weakness, or folly, and she was always the person selected to stay at home when any religious ceremony called away the rest of the establishment.

As the King’s god-daughter it was impressed on her that she ought to conform to his Church, and one of the many priests about the Court was appointed to instruct her.  In the dearth of all intellectual intercourse, and the absolute deficiency of books, she could not but become deeply interested in the arguments.  Her uncle had forearmed her with instruction, and she wrote to him on any difficulty which arose, and this became the chief occupation of her mind, distracting her thoughts from the one great cloud that hung over her memory.  Indeed one of the foremost bulwarks her feelings erected to fortify her conscience against the temptations around, was the knowledge that she would have, though of course under seal of confession, to relate that terrible story to a priest.

Hester Bridgeman could not imagine how her Portia could endure to hear the old English Prayer-book droned out.  For her part, she liked one thing or the other, either a rousing Nonconformist sermon in a meeting-house or a splendid Mass.