"You must stay to-night," she said, "as late as possible. I wish you could sleep here; but we are so crowded with these Frenchmen and Hollanders that there is not a bed empty. The Queen is in better humour, and if the play goes well, it may be that a word said even to-night might reach her heart. I will tell you when it is over. You must be present. I will send you supper here directly." Anthony inquired as to his dress. "Nay, nay," said Mistress Corbet, "that will do very well; it is sober and quiet, and a little splashed: it will appear that you came in such haste that you could not change it. Her Grace likes to see a man hot and in a hurry sometimes; and not always like a peacock in the shade.--And, Master Anthony, it suits you very well." He asked what time the play would be over, and that his horse might be saddled ready for him when he should want it; and Mary promised to see to it. He felt much more himself as he supped alone in the parlour. The bewilderment had passed; the courage and spirit of Mary had infected his own, and the stirring strange life of the palace had distracted him from that dreadful brooding into which he had at first sunk. When he had finished supper he sat in the window seat, pondering and praying too that the fierce heart of the Queen might be melted, and that God would give him words to say. There was much else too that he thought over, as he sat and watched the illuminated windows round the little lawn on which his own looked, and heard the distant clash of music from the Hall where the Queen was supping in state. He thought of Mary and of her gay and tender nature; and of his own boyish love for her. That indeed had gone, or rather had been transfigured into a brotherly honour and respect. Both she and he, he was beginning to feel, had a more majestic task before them than marrying and giving in marriage. The religion which made this woman what she was, pure and upright in a luxurious and treacherous Court, tender among hard hearts, sympathetic in the midst of selfish lives--this Religion was beginning to draw this young man with almost irresistible power. Mary herself was doing her part bravely, witnessing in a Protestant Court to the power of the Catholic Faith in her own life; and he, what was he doing? These last three days were working miracles in him. The way he had been received by Walsingham and Aylmer, their apparent inability to see his point of view on this foul bit of treachery, the whole method of the Government of the day;--and above all the picture that was floating now before his eyes over the dark lawn, of the little cell in the Tower and the silent wrenched figure lying upon the straw--the "gallant gentleman" as Mary had called him, who had reckoned all this price up before he embarked on the life of a priest, and was even now paying it gladly and thankfully, no doubt--all this deepened the previous impressions that Anthony's mind had received; and