Had she but dared, Mary Tudor would have submitted her rival to mental and bodily torture, until she had extracted a confession from her. All she could do was to confine her to her own room in the Palace; she would not lose sight of her, although the young girl had begged for permission to quit the Court and retire to a convent, for the silence and peace of which she felt an unutterable longing.
The Duke's trial by his peers was fixed for the morrow.
It was but a fortnight since that fateful evening. His Grace had been in the Tower since then, and by virtue of his high influence and of his exceptional position had demanded and readily obtained a speedy trial.
Twenty-four hours in which a queen might perchance still save the man she loved from a shameful and ignominious death. And she had thought and schemed and suffered during fourteen days, as perhaps no other woman had ever thought and suffered before. She was queen, yet felt herself powerless to accomplish the one desire of her life, which she would have bartered her kingdom to obtain: the life of the man she loved.
But to-day she had pluckily dried her tears. The whole morning she had spent at her toilette, carefully selecting—with an agitation which would have been ridiculous, considering her age and appearance, had it not been so intensely pathetic—the raiment which she thought would become her most. She had a burning desire to appear attractive.
Earnestly she studied the lines of her face, covered incipient wrinkles and faded cheeks with cosmetics, spent nigh on an hour in the arrangement of her coif. Then she repaired to a small room, which was hung with tapestry of a dull red, and into which the fading afternoon light would only peep very gently and discreetly.
Since then she had paced that narrow room incessantly and impatiently. Every few moments she rang a handbell, and to the stolid page or servitor in attendance she repeated the same anxious query—
"Is the guard in sight yet?"
"Not yet, Your Majesty," reiterated the page for the tenth time that day.
It was nigh on three o'clock in the afternoon when the Duchess of Lincoln at last came with the welcome news.