While quite young her father engaged a master to come and teach his children, and Jane learnt very quickly. Greek, Latin, and French were her great delight; she could sing, play, sew, and write very clearly. With all this she was very sweet in temper, truthful, and beautiful to look at. The queen, Katharine Parr, Henry VIII.'s sixth and last wife, took a great fancy to the little girl. She was a clever and learned woman herself, and begged Lady Frances Brandon to allow Jane to live with her at court, promising to see that her lessons were still carried on. So at the early age of nine we find Jane attending on the queen, and carrying her candles before her. This was by no means an easy feat to perform, as the little candle-bearer had to walk backwards with the lighted candles. The child did not know, and happy for her that she did not, that she was looked upon by the court as the heiress to the throne of England, and that the queen was trying to fit her for the difficult post she was destined to fill. When Jane was but ten years old, the king, Henry VIII., died, and his son Edward, a poor sickly boy, the same age as the Lady Jane, was made king. Soon after, Katharine Parr died, and the little girl walked as chief mourner at her funeral, her long black train being held up by a young nobleman. After this, the most natural thing would have been for Jane to go home to her mother at Bradgate; but her father and mother thought more of worldly advance than of their child's happiness. They agreed to let her go to Lord Seymour, a scheming and plotting man, who wished to bring about a marriage between the poor little Lady Jane and the young king, Edward VI., who was her cousin. At first Jane's parents pretended--for it was but pretence--that they wished to keep her at home, but when Lord Seymour gave them L500 they consented, for the sake of this contemptible sum of money, to let him take away their pretty little girl to teach her first, and then to marry her to a king. But this never came to pass, for the following year Seymour was taken to the Tower and beheaded in a horrible way, and his little ward was sent home. Her parents were bitterly disappointed; they treated her coldly, even cruelly, and her only happiness was in her lessons. One day Roger Ascham, Princess Elizabeth's clever master, came to stay at Bradgate. Passing through the park he saw that the members of the household were hunting, but where was the Lady Jane? She was in her own room, he was told. Thither he went, and found her busily reading a Greek book by Plato. "Why was she not hunting in the park?" he asked, with some surprise. "I wis," answered the child of fourteen, looking up with a bright smile, "all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure I find in Plato; they do not know, alas! what true pleasure means!"