“Your Grace speaks the truth in part,” said Richard, and then with effort added, “and likewise, madam, with your pardon, I would say that though I verily believe it is nobleness of heart and spirit that inclines poor Antony to espouse your Grace’s cause, there is to my mind a shallowness and indiscretion about his nature, even when most in earnest, such as would make me loath to commit any woman, or any secret, to his charge.”

“You are an honest man, Mr. Talbot,” said Mary; “I am glad my poor maid is in your charge.  Tell me, is this suit on his part made to your daughter or to the Scottish orphan?”

“To the Scottish orphan, madam.  Thus much he knows, though by what means I cannot tell, unless it be through that kinsman of mine, who, as I told your Grace, saw the babe the night I brought her in.”

“Doubtless,” responded Mary.  “Take care he neither knows more, nor hints what he doth know to the Countess.”

“So far as I can, I will, madam,” said Richard, “but his tongue is not easy to silence; I marvel that he hath not let the secret ooze out already.”

“Proving him to have more discretion than you gave him credit for, my good sir,” said the Queen, smiling.  “Refuse him, however, staunchly, grounding your refusal, if it so please you, on the very causes for which I should accept him, were the lassie verily what he deems her, my ward and kinswoman.  Nor do you accede to him, whatever word or token he may declare that he brings from me, unless it bear this mark,” and she hastily traced a peculiar-twisted form of M.  “You know it?” she asked.

“I have seen it, madam,” said Richard, gravely, for he knew it as the letter which had been traced on the child’s shoulders.

“Ah, good Master Richard,” she said, with a sweet and wistful expression, looking up to his face in pleading, and changing to the familiar pronoun, “thou likest not my charge, and I know that it is hard on an upright man like thee to have all this dissembling thrust on thee, but what can a poor captive mother do but strive to save her child from an unworthy lot, or from captivity like her own?  I ask thee to say nought, that is all, and to shelter the maid, who hath been as thine own daughter, yet a little longer.  Thou wilt not deny me, for her sake.”

“Madam, I deny nothing that a Christian man and my Queen’s faithful servant may in honour do.  Your Grace has the right to choose your own daughter’s lot, and with her I will deal as you direct me.  But, madam, were it not well to bethink yourself whether it be not a perilous and a cruel policy to hold out a bait to nourish hope in order to bind to your service a foolish though a generous youth, whose devotion may, after all, work you and himself more ill than good?”

Mary looked a good deal struck, and waved back her two attendants, who were both startled and offended at what Marie de Courcelles described as the Englishman’s brutal boldness.