So the ladies, in full state dresses, hovered over the fire, while
the children played in the window seat near at hand.

Gilbert Talbot's wife, a thin, yellow-haired, young creature,
promising to be like her mother, the Countess, had a tongue which
loved to run, and with the precocity and importance of wifehood at
sixteen, she dilated to her companions on her mother's constant
attendance on the Queen, and the perpetual plots for that lady's
escape. "She is as shifty and active as any cat-a-mount; and at
Chatsworth she had a scheme for being off out of her bedchamber
window to meet a traitor fellow named Boll; but my husband smelt it
out in good time, and had the guard beneath my lady's window, and the
fellows are in gyves, and to see the lady the day it was found out!
Not a wry face did she make. Oh no! 'Twas all my good lord, and my
sweet sir with her. I promise you butter would not melt in her
mouth, for my Lord Treasurer Cecil hath been to see her, and he has
promised to bring her to speech of her Majesty. May I be there to
see. I promise you 'twill be diamond cut diamond between them."

"How did she and my Lord Treasurer fare together?" asked Mrs.
Babington.

"Well, you know there's not a man of them all that is proof against
her blandishments. Her Majesty should have women warders for her.
'Twas good sport to see the furrows in his old brow smoothing out
against his will as it were, while she plied him with her tongue.
I never saw the Queen herself win such a smile as came on his lips,
but then he is always a sort of master, or tutor, as it were, to the
Queen. Ay," on some exclamation from Lady Talbot, "she heeds him
like no one else. She may fling out, and run counter to him for the