Discrown'd of two kingdoms, and bare;
Not first nor last on this one was cast
The burden that others should share.
Visions of England, by F. T. Palgrave




CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE WAIF.



On a spring day, in the year 1568, Mistress Talbot sat in her lodging
at Hull, an upper chamber, with a large latticed window, glazed with
the circle and diamond leading perpetuated in Dutch pictures, and
opening on a carved balcony, whence, had she been so minded, she
could have shaken hands with her opposite neighbour. There was a
richly carved mantel-piece, with a sea-coal fire burning in it, for
though it was May, the sea winds blew cold, and there was a fishy
odour about the town, such as it was well to counteract. The floor
was of slippery polished oak, the walls hung with leather, gilded in
some places and depending from cornices, whose ornaments proved to an
initiated eye, that this had once been the refectory of a small
priory, or cell, broken up at the Reformation.

Of furniture there was not much, only an open cupboard, displaying
two silver cups and tankards, a sauce-pan of the same metal, a few
tall, slender, Venetian glasses, a little pewter, and some rare
shells. A few high-backed chairs were ranged against the wall; there
was a tall "armory," i.e. a linen-press of dark oak, guarded on each