Scarcely had I settled that in my mind, when the door opened to admit Lady Caroline Wood, who approached me with great kindness, asking how I had slept and if I were recovered from my fatigue. When I had answered that my night's sleep was good and my health as well as usual, she asked if my woman might withdraw as she wished to converse with me in private. 'Certainly,' I replied, a little wonderingly, and then I bade Betsy leave the room; and Lady Caroline, who was not much older than myself--though by wearing a large head-dress and elaborate garments she looked so--sat down on the edge of my bed, and talked long with me. 'I have heard,' she began--'Sir Hubert has told us--what a brave girl you were yesterday in withstanding alone, with your few servants, the cruelties a crowd of men and boys were practising on two old women. It was noble of you, Mistress Margaret, and I honour you for it with all my heart.' Thereupon she took up my right hand and pressed it for a moment to her lips. 'You are a heroine,' she said, 'and I admire and love you.' 'Indeed it was nothing,' I rejoined; 'moreover I was powerless to avert their cruel death,' and the tears rose to my eyes as I thought of what those poor old women endured. But Lady Caroline, stooping over me, kissed my tears away. 'You did your best,' she said, 'and may well trust that the good God would receive them through that painful--if haply short--gate into His glorious kingdom.' She was silent for a moment or two, and my heart warmed to her, for I recognized that she loved Him whom I served, and thought not small things of Him, but the very best. Then she began again-- 'They were taken away from the evil, and your precious life was saved for further and it may be greater work. You are going, I hear, to attend the noble lady who has married Guildford Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland's fourth son?' 'Yes,' replied I, 'Lady Jane Grey, to call her by her maiden name. Do you know aught about her, Lady Caroline?' and there was some anxiety in my tone, for indeed it mattered much to me what sort of a lady that was to whom I was making so long and hazardous a journey. 'Indeed I do. She is a very, very great lady. Some think she will even become queen when our King Edward dies.' 'Queen!' exclaimed I, 'but the king has sisters. Princess Mary will be our sovereign after him.' Lady Caroline sighed deeply. 'That would be very sad for England were it to happen,' she said. 'Princess Mary is a Papist, you know, and if she became queen she would plunge the kingdom into papistry and persecutions, so that rivers of blood would flow----' 'And the good curates, and Master Montgomery,' I asked, 'what would become of them?' For my thoughts had flown to the limited circle in which I had been brought up and the good old man from whose teachings I was fresh. 'They would be martyred--perchance he would be burned at the stake,' said Lady Caroline. 'No, no,' I cried. 'God would not allow it.'