My heart goes out to her. I too was once a girl too poor to attract a good marriage, a girl who turned to books for company and comfort. As soon as she comes to court I see that she is given a bedroom near to mine. I hold her hand as we go together to the chapel every morning, and we spend the day together. She responds with relief, as if she has been waiting all her life for a mother, and finally I have arrived. She reads with me, and when the preachers come from London she listens to them and even joins in the discussion of their sermons. She loves music, as we all do; she loves fine clothes and dancing. I am able to teach her and, after a few days, joke with her, pet her, reprimand her, and pray with her. In a very little while, I kiss her forehead in the morning and give her a mother’s blessing at night almost without thinking.

Lady Mary takes to this Christmas family as a young woman who has tiptoed through the world since the exile of her mother. It is as if she has been holding her breath in fear and she can breathe out at last. At last she knows where she should be: and she lives in a court where she has an honored place. I would not dream of trying to mother her—it would be ridiculous: we are nearly the same age—but we can be like sisters together, making a home for the two younger ones, diverting and comforting the king, and keeping the country in alliance with Spain: Mary’s kinsmen. I support the religious reforms that her father has judged are right; naturally she would want the church to return to the rule of Rome; but I think that the more she hears of the philosophers who want to restore the church to its earliest purity, the more she will question the history of the papacy that has brought the church into corruption and disrepute. I believe that the Word of God must mean more to her than the empty symbols that decorated the churches and monasteries, the pointless ritual that was used to dazzle people who cannot read and think for themselves. When she thinks of this, as I am thinking about it, she will surely turn to reform as I am doing.