"She knows! she knows! I answer for her with my life," said Antony.
"Let her then swear to utter no word of what she has seen save to the Queen," said Langston, and Cicely detected a glitter in that pale eye, and with a horrified leap of thought, recollected how easy it would be to drag her away into one of those black pools, beyond all ken.
"Oh save me, Antony!" she cried clinging to his arm.
"No one shall touch you. I will guard you with my life!" exclaimed the impulsive young man, feeling for the sword that was not there.
"Who spoke of hurting the foolish wench?" growled Savage; but Tichborne said, "No one would hurt you, madam; but it is due to us all that you should give us your word of honour not to disclose what has passed, save to our only true mistress."
"Oh yes! yes!" cried Cicely hastily, scarcely knowing what passed her lips, and only anxious to escape from that gleaming eye of Langston, which had twice before filled her with a nameless sense of the necessity of terrified obedience. "Oh! let me go. I hear my father's voice."
She sprang forward with a cry between joy and terror, and darted up to Richard Talbot, while Savage, the man who looked most entirely unlike a disguised gentleman, stepped forward, and in a rough, north country dialect, averred that the young gentlewoman had lost her way.
"Poor maid," said kind Richard, gathering the two trembling little hands into one of his own broad ones. "How was it? Thanks, good fellow," and he dropped a broad piece into Savage's palm; "thou hast done good service. What, Cis, child, art quaking?"
"Hast seen any hobgoblins, Cis ?" said Diccon, at her other side. "I'm sure I heard them laugh."
"Whist, Dick," said his father, putting a strong arm round the girl's waist. "See, my wench, yonder is the goodly light of day. We shall soon be there."
With all his fatherly kindness, he helped the agitated girl up the remaining ascent, as the lovely piece of blue sky between the retreating rocks grew wider, and the archway higher above them. Cis felt that infinite repose and reliance that none else could give, yet the repose was disturbed by the pang of recollection that the secret laid on her was their first severance. It was unjust to his kindness; strange, doubtful, nay grisly, to her foreboding mind, and she shivered alike from that and the chill of the damp cavern, and then he drew her cloak more closely about her, and halted to ask for the flask of wine which one of the adventurous spirits had brought, that Queen Elizabeth's health might be drunk by her true subjects in the bowels of the earth. The wine was, of course, exhausted; but Dr. Jones bustled forward with some cordial waters which he had provided in case of anyone being struck with the chill of the cave, and Cicely was made to swallow some.
By this time she had been missed, and the little party were met by some servants sent by the Earl at the instance of the much-alarmed Queen to inquire for her. A little farther on came Mistress Talbot, in much anxiety and distress, though as Diccon ran forward to meet her, and she saw Cicely on her husband's arm, she resumed her calm and staid demeanour, and when assured that the maiden had suffered no damage, she made no special demonstrations of joy or affection. Indeed, such would have been deemed unbecoming in the presence of strangers, and disrespectful to the Queen and the Earl, who were not far off.
Mary, on the other hand, started up, held out her arms, received the truant with such vehement kisses, as might almost have betrayed their real relationship, and then reproached her, with all sorts of endearing terms, for having so terrified them all; nor would she let the girl go from her side, and kept her hand in her own, Diccon meanwhile had succeeded in securing his father's attention, which had been wholly given to Cicely till she was placed in the women's hands. "Father," he said, "I wish that one of the knaves with the torches who found our Cis was the woman with the beads and bracelets, ay, and Tibbott, too."
"Belike, belike, my son," said Richard. "There are folk who can take as many forms as a barnacle goose. Keep thou a sharp eye as the fellows pass out, and pull me by the cloak if thou seest him."
Of course he was not seen, and Richard, who was growing more and more cautious about bringing vague or half-proved suspicions before his Lord, decided to be silent and to watch, though he sighed to his wife that the poor child would soon be in the web.
Cis had not failed to recognise that same identity, and to feel a half-realised conviction that the Queen had not chosen to confide to her that the two female disguises both belonged to Langston. Yet the contrast between Mary's endearments and the restrained manner of Susan so impelled her towards the veritable mother, that the compunction as to the concealment she had at first experienced passed away, and her heart felt that its obligations were towards her veritable and most loving parent. She told the Queen the whole story at night, to Mary's great delight. She said she was sure her little one had something on her mind, she had so little to say of her adventure, and the next day a little privy council was contrived, in which Cicely was summoned again to tell her tale. The ladies declared they had always hoped much from their darling page, in whom they had kept up the true faith, but Sir Andrew Melville shook his head and said: "I'd misdoot ony plot where the little finger of him was. What garred the silly loon call in the young leddy ere he kenned whether she wad keep counsel?"
CHAPTER XVII. THE EBBING WELL.
Cicely's thirst for adventures had received a check, but the Queen, being particularly well and in good spirits, and trusting that this would be her last visit to Buxton, was inclined to enterprise, and there were long rides and hawking expeditions on the moors.
The last of these, ere leaving Buxton, brought the party to the hamlet of Barton Clough, where a loose horseshoe of the Earl's caused a halt at a little wayside smithy. Mary, always friendly and free- spoken, asked for a draught of water, and entered into conversation with the smith's rosy-cheeked wife who brought it to her, and said it was sure to be good and pure for the stream came from the Ebbing and Flowing Well, and she pointed up a steep path. Then, on a further question, she proceeded, "Has her ladyship never heard of the Ebbing Well that shows whether true love is soothfast?"
"How so?" asked the Queen. "How precious such a test might be. It would save many a maiden a broken heart, only that the poor fools would ne'er trust it."
"I have heard of it," said the Earl, "and Dr. Jones would demonstrate to your Grace that it is but a superstition of the vulgar regarding a natural phenomenon."
"Yea, my Lord," said the smith, looking up from the horse's foot; "'tis the trade of yonder philosophers to gainsay whatever honest folk believed before them. They'll deny next that hens lay eggs, or blight rots wheat. My good wife speaks but plain truth, and we have seen it o'er and o'er again."
"What have you seen, good man?" asked Mary eagerly, and ready answer was made by the couple, who had acquired some cultivation of speech and manners by their wayside occupation, and likewise as cicerones to the spring.
"Seen, quoth the lady?" said the smith. "Why, he that is a true man and hath a true maid can quaff a draught as deep as his gullet can hold-or she that is true and hath a true love-but let one who hath a flaw in the metal, on the one side or t'other, stoop to drink, and the water shrinks away so as there's not the moistening of a lip."
"Ay: the ladies may laugh," added his wife, "but 'tis soothfast for all that."
"Hast proved it, good dame?" asked the Queen archly, for the pair were still young and well-looking enough to be jested with.
"Ay! have we not, madam?" said the dame. "Was not my man yonder, Rob, the tinker's son, whom my father and brethren, the smiths down yonder at Buxton, thought but scorn of, but we'd taken a sup together at the Ebbing Well, and it played neither of us false, so we held out against 'em all, and when they saw there was no help for it, they gave Bob the second best anvil and bellows for my portion, and here we be."