Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/382

368 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. LCH. 55. was again called into requisition. The Queen-mother sent for him to her bedroom and cross-questioned him, first about the truth of the Leicester scandals, and then as to what he thought of Elizabeth's present sincerity. On the first point Cavalcanti answered that truth was the daughter of time. Elizabeth had been fourteen years on the throne ; the hundred eyes of Argus had been fixed upon her, and nothing had been observed to justify ' the false, slanderous, and envious bruits which had been spread to her dishonour ; there was not in the whole world a more noble, virtuous, or better- natured princess/ About the marriage he said that he had every reason, public and private, to believe that she was in earnest, and unless difficulties were made by France the Duke might be in England before midsummer ; buf- he suggested that Lord Buckhurst, her cousin, was in Paris, and could give her the fullest information. Buckhurst, who had finished the business which brought him over, 1 was on the point of returning to England. The Queen-mother invited him before his departure to look over with her the gardens which she was laying out at the Tuileries, and there drawing him apart under the trees, she said that he could not be ig- norant of the contemplated match ; both she and the King, she told him, ' were fearfully carried with mistrust 1 Sir Thomas Sackville, first Lord Buckhurst, was grandson of John Sackville and Margaret Boleyn, sis- ter of the Earl of Wiltshire, the father of Anne. Buckhurst had been sent to Paris to congratulate Charles IX. on his marriage.