Читать книгу A Queen of Nine Days онлайн

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'Indeed I do. She is a very, very great lady. Some think she will even become queen when our King Edward dies.'

'Queen!' exclaimed I, 'but the king has sisters. Princess Mary will be our sovereign after him.'

Lady Caroline sighed deeply.

'That would be very sad for England were it to happen,' she said. 'Princess Mary is a Papist, you know, and if she became queen she would plunge the kingdom into papistry and persecutions, so that rivers of blood would flow——'

'And the good curates, and Master Montgomery,' I asked, 'what would become of them?' For my thoughts had flown to the limited circle in which I had been brought up and the good old man from whose teachings I was fresh.

'They would be martyred—perchance he would be burned at the stake,' said Lady Caroline.

'No, no,' I cried. 'God would not allow it.'

'God often works by means of man,' the lady answered solemnly, 'and it may be in the power of the more enlightened of the people of England to prevent those calamities from happening.'