It is the dusty hot weather at the end of the English summer, the leaves of the trees like crumpled gowns at the end of a masque. We have been sent back to Sheffield Castle. Whatever crisis they feared seems to be over and the summer is sunny once more. The court is on progress and Lady Wendover, writing to me from Audley End, tells me that Elizabeth has turned gracious to her cousins the Howards, is staying in their house, is speaking sweetly of her love for her cousin Thomas, and they are going to ask her to forgive him and restore him to his place at court and his house at Norfolk. The poor Howard children, who left their home in the hands of the royal assessors, are now asking Elizabeth for her favor and are getting a kindly hearing. The court is hopeful that this will end happily. We all want to see a reconciliation.

Elizabeth has no family but the Howards; she and her cousin have been brought up together. They may quarrel as cousins do, but no one can doubt their affection. She will be seeking to find a way to forgive him, and this progress and this hospitality by his young son, in his father’s house, is her way to allow him back into her presence.

I let myself hope that the danger and the unhappiness of these last two miserable summers are finished. Elizabeth has ordered us back to Sheffield Castle; the fears that drove us to Tutbury are passed. Elizabeth will forgive her cousin Norfolk; perhaps she will marry Anjou and we can hope that she will have a son. The Scots queen will be sent back to Scotland, to manage as well or as ill as she can. I will have my husband restored to me and slowly, little by little, we will regain and recoup our fortune. What has been sold is lost and gone and we can never have it back. But the loans can be repaid, the mortgages settled, and the tenants will get used to paying higher rents in time. Already, I have made plans for mortgaging a coal mine and selling some packages of land that should take my lord out of the hands of the moneylenders within five years. And if the Scots queen honors her promises, or if Elizabeth pays some share, even half her debt to us, we should survive this terrible experience without the loss of a house.