"Your Majesty . . ."
And then the peremptory—
"Silence, wench!" from irate Mary Tudor.
And then nothing more.
She had gone evidently, bearing her humiliation, leaving him in doubt and fear, to endure a torture of the soul which well-nigh unmanned him.
She must have known that he had heard, and yet she said nothing.
To the Duke of Wessex, the most favoured man in England, the grand seigneur with one foot on the throne, the idea of suffering a false accusation in silence was a thing absolutely beyond comprehension—weakness which must have its origin in guilt.
Human nature is so constituted that man is bound to measure his fellow-creatures by his own standard; else why doth charity think no evil? The goodness and purity which comes from the soul is always mirrored in the soul of others. Evil sees evil everywhere. Pride does not understand humility.
Thus in Wessex' heart!
Had his sovereign liege—that sovereign being a man—dared to put forth a base insinuation against him, he would have forgotten the kingship and struck the man, who impeached his honour, fearlessly in the face. Nothing but conscious guilt would have stayed his avenging hand, or silenced the indignant words on his lips.