Never for a moment did he reveal to the unwary young girl all that he had guessed through her last unguarded speech.
Her love for Wessex! that he knew already! Its depth alone was a revelation to him. But her jealousy! How her lips had trembled and her hand twitched when speaking of another, an unknown woman who had called forth in Wessex that spirit of noble self-sacrifice, that immolation of his own honour and dignity, which had finally landed him in a criminal dock.
A woman's passion and a woman's jealousy! Two precious assets in His Eminence's present balance. He pondered over what he had learned, and victory loomed more certain than before. He loved this present situation, the acute tension of this palpitating moment, when he seemed to hold this beautiful woman's soul, bare and fettered, writhing with agony and self-torture.
To dissect a human heart! to watch its every quiver, to note the effect of every searing iron applied with a skilful hand! then to achieve success in the end through subtle arts and devices seemingly so full of benevolence, yet instinct with the most refined, most far-reaching cruelty! This was the form of enjoyment which more than any other appealed to the jaded mind of this blasé diplomatist. The feline nature within him loved this game with the trembling mouse.
But outwardly he sighed, a deep sigh of disappointment.
"Ah! if they lie!" he said, a gentle tone of melancholy pervading his entire attitude, "if indeed it was not you, my daughter, who were with Don Miguel that night . . . then naught can save His Grace. . . . He has suffered in silence. . . . He will die to-morrow in silence . . . and innocent."
He had risen from his chair, and began wandering about the narrow room—aimlessly—as if lost in thought. Ursula was staring straight before her. The first revelation of her present danger had suddenly come to her. As in a flash she had suddenly realized that this man had sent for her in order to use her for his own ends. She felt that she was literally in the position of the mouse about to be sacrificed to the greedy ambition of this feline creature, who had neither rectitude nor compunction where his ambition was at stake.
Yet after that one betrayal of her emotions she had made a vigorous effort to regain her self-control. Every instinct of self-preservation was on the alert now, and yet she knew already that she was bound to succumb. To what she could not guess, but she felt herself the weaker vessel of the two. He was calm and cruel, passionless and tortuous, whilst she felt with all her heart and soul and with all her senses.
And though he could not now see her face the Cardinal studied her every movement. He could see her figure stiffen with the iron determination to retain her self-possession, and inwardly he smiled, for he knew that the next moment all that rigidity would vanish, the marble statue would become living clay, the palsied nerves would quiver with horror, and she herself would fall, a weeping, wailing creature, supplicating at his feet.
And this by such a simple method!