"Ah! Diplomacy is full of surprises. But you are pleased?"
Everingham, however, was not prepared to admit anything to this man, whose face he could not read, but whose tortuous ways he more than half mistrusted.
"I hardly know how to understand Your Eminence," he said guardedly. "I need hardly say that my fondest hope was to see Queen Mary wedded to Wessex, for that is common knowledge. But since His Grace's meeting with the beautiful Lady Ursula, I fully expect to hear him declare his intention of keeping his troth to her."
"You think her so very irresistible, then?—or His Grace so very susceptible?"
"I think that the Duke has always kept at the back of his mind an idea that he was in some measure bound to Lady Ursula."
"Let us add, my lord, that the charm and grace of the lady will inevitably tend to develop that idea. Eh?"
"And that Your Eminence will probably triumph in consequence."
"You, therefore, my lord, have by now set your heart on undoing what to-day's chance meeting may, perchance, have accomplished. By you I also mean your friends, the nobility and gentry of England, who would mourn to see His Grace wedded to Lady Ursula Glynde."
"Our loss will be your Eminence's gain, probably," rejoined Everingham with a sigh.
The Cardinal waited a moment before he continued the conversation. He had deliberately sought this interchange of ideas. Openness and frankness in matters political were not usually a part of His Eminence's programme, but this evening he seemed desirous to gain this young Englishman's confidence.