'You would scarce believe, could you see Ambrose, that he--so tall and thin, with quiet and restrained movements and seldom smiling mouth--could be the little torment of Ford Place! Four years have told on my boy, like thrice that number, and belike the terrible ravages of the fever may have taken something of his youthful spring away. 'He is tender and gentle to me, but there is reserve. 'On one subject we can exchange but few words; you will know what that subject is. From the little I can gather, I think his father was not unkind to him; and far be it from me to forget the parting words, when the soul was standing ready to take its flight into the unseen world. But oh! my sister, how wide the gulf set between him, for whom the whole world, I may say, wears mourning garb to-day--for foreign countries mourn no less than England--how wide, I say, is the gulf set between that noble life and his, of whom I dare not write, scarce dare to think. 'Yet God's mercy is infinite in Christ Jesus, and the gulf, which looks so wide to us, may be bridged over by that same infinite mercy. 'God grant it. 'This with my humble, dutiful sympathy to your dear lady, the Countess of Pembroke, for whom no poor words of man can be of comfort, from your loving sister, MARY GIFFORD. '_Post Scriptum._--Master Humphrey Ratcliffe has proved a true friend to me, and to my boy. To him, under God, I owe my child's restoration to health, and to me. 'He is away with that solemn and sorrowful train I saw embark for Flushing, nor do I know when he will return. M. G.' * * * * * 'At Penshurst, in the month of February 1586,--For you, my dear sister Mary, I will write some account of the sorrowful pageant, from witnessing which I have lately returned to Penshurst with my dear and sorely-stricken mistress, and all words would fail me to tell you how heavy is her grief, and how nobly she has borne herself under its weight. 'Four long and weary months have these been since the news of Sir Philip's death came to cast a dark shadow over this country. Much there has been to harass those who are intimately connected with him. Of these troubles I need not write. The swift following of Sir Philip's death on that of his honoured father, Sir Henry Sidney, caused mighty difficulties as to the carrying out of that last will and testament in which he so nobly desired to have every creditor satisfied, and justice done. 'But, sure, no man had ever a more generous and worthy father-in-law than Sir Philip possessed in Sir Francis Walsingham. All honour be to him for the zeal and care he has shown in the settlement of what seemed at the first insurmountable mountains of difficulties. 'Of these it does not become me to speak, rather of that day, Thursday last past, when I was witness of the great ceremony of burying all that was mortal of him for whom Queen and peasant weep.