‘I think, in my heart, from that day when she came and kissed me on the road after the Queen had passed.’ He spoke up steadily, putting force upon himself to do so. ‘What made you think that she that kissed you was your mother?’ ‘I know not--some instinct. But the thought only grew to haunt me after years had gone, when once there returned upon me a memory of Clerivault’s message, and of how, in seeming response to it, my dear master had taken me apart that day to see the Queen go by, and of what had followed. And after, when I read the name in the book, and thought of how I called you Uncle, it all seemed to piece together, so that in a moment I felt the truth of it, and wept.’ ‘Why should you weep?’ He said it harshly, with a sneer. ‘If she’s dead, the nobler parent lives. Are you not curious to know about him--your father?’ ‘No; I hated him.’ ‘Hated!’ ‘He was an evil man. She feared him, sitting beside her. He looked at me, too, as if he hated me.’ ‘God!’ An amazed, half startled look came into his eyes. ‘Speak soft. What it is to have so quick a wit! Thy father, that--was it? Do you know, then, what you are?’ ‘I know what he called me.’ ‘What?’ ‘I will not speak if of myself.’ The eyes were piercing him; and then, all in a moment, a film seemed to come before them, and they were wonderfully dim and soft. An arm was put about his neck; the voice dropped to a moving tenderness, full of grief and pity. ‘I will not speak it of thee neither. A curse on him that made thee so! Ah, that day! She would importune me--child, she would importune me for a sight of thee--a little speech--one kiss, to ease her load of shameful yearning. And I, though I feared the issue, consented; I sent Clerivault to prepare the way. And he--that evil man--he looked on thee with hate, did he? And well he might, to see such evidences of his own villainy. She was ever sweet and trustful--nay, you shall hear it all--my Jane, my little sister--and he a smooth-tongued liar. It was at Mary’s Court they met, she a lady-in-waiting, and he, already a wedded man, just out from the Tower--would to God he had shared his father’s fate there--made Master of the Queen’s ordnance. A curse upon his house! But she ever believed in him--she died believing in him. Ah died, my girl! And we had been children here together--bred in the old faith--in her heart she never abandoned it--she clung to where she loved. It was that guided my choice of thy preceptor, thine adoptive father--a good old man, but weakly recusant, known to me by name and repute. A Protestant, forsooth? Neither that nor the other, but a Catholic with views moderated by the Reform movement. So were we all: so was the Queen herself, till Cecil drove her to intolerance: so was--no, he was never but a plausible time-server--a perjurer and false-swearer. Yet he gave thee life, Brion--he gave thee life.’