preachers would hail her as Satan loosed on them, and the nobles dread nothing so much as being made to disgorge the lands of the Crown and the Church, on which they are battening.  As to her son, he was fain enough to break forth from one set of tutors, and the messages of France and Spain tickled his fancy—­but he is nought.  He is crammed with scholarship, and not without a shrewd apprehension; but, with respect be it spoken, more the stuff that court fools are made of than kings.  It may be, as a learned man told Johnstone, that the shock the Queen suffered when the brutes put Davy to death before her eyes, three months ere his birth, hath damaged his constitution, for he is at the mercy of whosoever chooses to lead him, and hath no will of his own.  This Master of Gray was at first inclined to the Queen’s party, thinking more might be got by a reversal of all things, but now he finds the king’s men so strong in the saddle, and the Queen’s French kindred like to be too busy at home to aid her, what doth he do, but list to our Queen’s offers, and this ambassage of his, which hath a colour of being for Queen Mary’s release, is verily to make terms with my Lord Treasurer and Sir Francis Walsingham for the pension he is to have for keeping his king in the same mind.”

“Turning a son against a mother!  I marvel that honourable counsellors can bring themselves to the like.”

“Policy, sir, policy,” said Humfrey.  “And this Gray maketh a fine show of chivalry and honour, insomuch that Sir Philip Sidney himself hath desired his friendship; but, you see, the poor lady is as far from freedom as she was when first she came to Sheffield.”

“She is very far from believing it, poor dame.  I am sorry for her, Humfrey, more sorry than I ever thought I could be, now I have seen more of her.  My Lord himself says he never knew her break a promise.  How gracious she is there is no telling.”

“That we always knew,” said Humfrey, looking somewhat amazed, that his honoured father should have fallen under the spell of the “siren between the cold earth and moon.”

“Yes, gracious, and of a wondrous constancy of mind, and evenness of temper,” said Richard.  “Now that thy mother and I have watched her more closely, we can testify that, weary, worn, and sick of body and of heart as she is, she never letteth a bitter or a chiding word pass her lips towards her servants.  She hath nothing to lose by it.  Their fidelity is proven.  They would stand by her to the last, use them as she would, but assuredly their love must be doubly bound up in her when they see how she regardeth them before herself.  Let what will be said of her, son Humfrey, I shall always maintain that I never saw woman, save thine own good mother, of such evenness of condition, and sweetness of consideration for all about her, ay, and patience in adversity, such as, Heaven forbid, thy mother should ever know.”

“Amen, and verily amen,” said Humfrey.  “Deem you then that she hath not worked her own woe?”