"Nay! why should Your Eminence speak of a lady in this case?"
"What have I said?" quoth the Cardinal, throwing up his be-ringed hands in mock alarm. "Nay! Your Grace need have no fear. Discretion is an integral portion of my calling. I was merely indulging in reminiscences. My purple robes do not, as you know, conceal a priest. Though a prince of the Church, I am an ecclesiastic only in name, and therefore may remember, without a blush, that I was twenty once and very hot-tempered. The lady in my case put me under lock and key whilst she went to another gallant."
"Again you speak of a lady, my lord," said the Duke, with the same light indifference. "May I ask——"
"Nay, nay! I pray you ask me nothing . . . I saw nothing, believe me . . ."
He paused a moment. Wessex had turned to his dog, who, yawning and stretching, after the manner of his kind, and not the least upset by his recent incarceration, had just appeared in the doorway of the inner room.
"I saw nothing," continued the Cardinal, with a voice full of gentle, good-natured indulgence, "save a charming lady standing here alone, close to that door, when I entered with Her Majesty. What Queen Mary guessed or feared, alas! I cannot tell. The charming lady had just turned the key in the lock . . . and this set me thinking of my own youth and follies. . . . But Your Grace must pardon an old man who has but one affection left in life. Don Miguel is as a son to me——"
"I pray you, my lord," here interrupted Wessex haughtily, "what has the Marquis de Suarez' name to do with me?"
"Only this, my son," rejoined the Cardinal with truly paternal benevolence, "Don Miguel is a stranger in England . . . I had almost hoped that hospitality would prevent Your Grace from flying your hawk after his birds. . . .
"Don Miguel would be hard hit," he added quickly, seeing that Wessex, at the end of his patience, was about to make an angry retort, "for we all know that where His Grace of Wessex desires to conquer, other vows and other lovers are very soon forgotten . . . But the Marquis is young . . . I would like to plead his cause. . . ."
His keen eyes had never for a moment strayed from the proud face of the Duke. He was shrewd enough to know that in speaking thus, he was reaching the outermost limits of His Grace's forbearance. His robes and his age rendered him to a certain extent immune from an actual quarrel with a man of Wessex' physique, nor did fear for his own personal safety ever enter into the far-seeing calculations of this astute diplomatist. Whatever his weaknesses might be, cowardice was not one of them, and he pursued his own aims boldly and relentlessly.