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Two or three days later Humfrey had told him of Langston's interview with Walsingham, which he had at the time laughed to scorn, thinking himself able to penetrate any disguise of that Proteus, and likewise believing that he was blinding Walsingham. He first took alarm a few days after Humfrey's departure, and wrote to Queen Mary to warn her, convinced that the traitor must be Langston.

"Child," said the Queen, as she came in, "is thy mind set on wedding an archduke?" "Marriage is not for me, madam," said Cicely, perplexed and shaken by this strange address and by Humfrey's presence. "Nay, didst not once tell me of a betrothal now many years ago? What wouldst say if thine own mother were to ratify it?"

"Then truly you are no better than a traitor, and a Spaniard, and a Papist," and fists were clenched on both aides, while Cis flew between, pulling down Humfrey's uplifted hand, and crying, "No, no; he did not say he thought so, only he had heard it." "Let him say it again!" growled Antony, his arm bared. "No, don't, Humfrey!" as if she saw it between his clenched teeth.

She loved her mother with a romantic enthusiastic affection, missed her engaging caresses, and felt her Bridgefield home eminently dull, flat, and even severe, especially since she had lost the excitement of Humfrey's presence, and likewise her companion Diccon.

Yet, though she had infinitely more faith in Humfrey's affection than she had in that of Babington, she had not by any means the same dread of being used to bait the hook for him, partly because she knew his integrity too well to expect to shake it, and partly because he was perfectly aware of her real birth, and could not be gulled with such delusive hopes as poor Antony might once have been.

Any way, Humfrey's heart was at Chartley, and every warning he had received made him doubly anxious to be there in person, to be Cicely's guardian in case of whatever danger might threaten her.

It was as unlike as was riding a white palfrey through a forest, guided by knights in armour, to the being packed with all the ladies into a heavy jolting conveyance, guarded before and behind by armed servants and yeomen, among whom Humfrey's form could only now and then be detected. The Queen had chosen her seat where she could best look out from the scant amount of window.

Cis told with more coherence now, but the tears in her eyes and colour deepening: "I was taking in Humfrey's kerchiefs from the bleaching on the grass, when Master Babington he had brought me a plume of pheasant's feathers from the hunting, and he began. O mother, is it sooth? He said my Lord had sent him." "That is true, my child, but you know we have no choice but to refuse thee."

Ever and anon she looked to Humfrey's face for sympathy, but he sat gravely listening, his two hands clasped over the hilt of his sword, and his chin resting on them, as if to prevent a muscle of his face from moving. When they rose up to leave the galleries, and there was the power to say a word, she turned to him earnestly. "A piteous sight," he said, "and a right gallant defence."

When he came to Oxford, Merton tower had been gladdening men's eyes for scarcely fifty years, and the tower of Magdalen had just risen to rival its beauty; Duke Humfrey's Library and the Divinity School were still in their first glory, and the monks of St.