These tutors had indeed a great claim upon my dear lady's devotion, for they had instructed her so well that she spoke and wrote with correctness Greek, Latin, Italian and French, and also understood not a little of Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic; moreover, she was, with all that learning, so modest and humble that you might have thought her a very simple ignorant maid at first sight, though, speaking for myself, I have ever noticed that large-minded people who are cultured and educated finely are more chary in expressing their feelings and meeker in their bearing than the empty-headed braggarts who think by much speaking and loud boasting they will carry all before them. ''Tis an empty whistle that makes most sound,' my father used to say, and he knew much of life, though he had buried himself latterly in the country. It was very quiet at Sion House for a month or six weeks after I went there, and the life that we led would have seemed, though stately, tame and monotonous after the wild freedom of my home and the lively companionship of my young brothers if it had not been for the great beauty and fascination with which Lady Jane endowed it. Following her about, listening to her footsteps when she was absent, looking at her when she was present, wondering what I could do to please her, studying to comfort her when she was cast down--for she had troubles, even then, owing to the severity of her parents who, though she was married and apart from them (they lived at Sheen House at the other side of the Thames), by no means showed her kindness and consideration--so filled my time and thoughts that every moment of the days was full of interest and sped by with lightning speed. Then, on the ninth of July, all at once, as a storm breaks out after a calm, or a tumult after a time of torpor and almost unnatural quiescence, the peaceful quietude of Sion House was broken up by the arrival of an illustrious company with their followers. Mistress Ellen brought the news to Lady Jane, with whom I was sitting in the drawing-room, that the Duke of Northumberland, the Marquis of Northampton and the Earls of Arundel, Huntingdon, and Pembroke had arrived and were desirous of seeing her.