"Nay! but the error this time is none of my making, my lord. 'Tis you, I think, who look upon me as an enemy."
"Oh! . . . your Eminence . . ." protested the young man.
"Well, an antagonist, if you will. Confess that you thought—and still think—that I have been scheming to bring the Duke of Wessex to the feet of Lady Ursula Glynde, his promised wife."
"A scheme in which Your Eminence succeeded over well, I fancy," retorted Everingham bitterly.
"But that is where you are in error, my dear lord; for, believe me, that, at the present moment, my sole desire is to put an insuperable barrier between His Grace and that beautiful young lady."
"Your sole desire, my lord?"
As the night was dark Everingham could see nothing of His Eminence's expression of face. If he had, he probably would only have seen the same mask of polite blandness which the Cardinal usually wore.
The young man, certes, was no match for these astute Spaniards, who had all the wiles and artifices of diplomacy at their finger-tips; his love for Wessex and the earnestness of his own political views gave him a certain amount of shrewdness, but even that shrewdness was at fault in the face of this extraordinary statement suddenly made by the Cardinal.
"You are surprised?" commented His Eminence.
"Boundlessly, I confess."