"Nay, Mirrab, have no fear," said Wessex kindly, as he took her rough hands in his and tried to soothe her scared spirits with a gentle touch. "Once by chance I saved thy life . . . but thou in return hast now restored to me that which is far dearer than life itself. I am eternally thy debtor, Mirrab, and I pledge thee the honour of Wessex that no harm shall come to thee . . . for I myself will beg for thy pardon of Her Majesty on my knees."
"Nay, my lord," rejoined Mary Tudor earnestly, for he had turned to the Queen, prepared to proffer his request on his knees, "meseems a grievous wrong has been done to you—if unwittingly—by your Queen and country. Let the wench be free to pray to the Holy Virgin for her great sin. I myself will care for her, and she shall enter any convent she may choose, and be honoured there as if she had brought with her the richest dowry in the land. But," she added, turning to Lord Chandois, "I desire her to make full confession once more before you, my lord, in writing, and to swear to it and sign it with her name. You may go, wench," she said finally, turning to Mirrab, "your Queen has pardoned you. May you be happy in the peace of the convent. We will never forget you, and ever see that joy shall always be in your life."
Slowly, as the Queen spoke, Mirrab sank upon her knees. It seemed to the poor girl as if God's angels were whispering words of comfort in her ear. Two servitors now came close to her, ready to lead her back to the Palace, there to place her under the charge of waiting-women until her confession had been duly written and sworn to.
But before she finally allowed herself to be led away she once more turned to Wessex.
"May I kiss thy hand?" she murmured gently.
He gave her his hand, and she covered it with kisses, and then she passed out of his life, ever remembered by him, ever comforted, happy in the peaceful and silent home which the Queen had so royally provided for her.
But this little interlude had roused the Cardinal's feverish impatience to boiling point. Already he had tortured his astute brain for some sort of issue out of this tangled web. He would not own a defeat so readily, certainly not before he made a final struggle to reassert the dignity of his position. He forced his face to express nothing but delicate irony, his eyes not to betray the slightest hint of fear.
"Truly, this is somewhat curious justice," he said, as Mirrab's strange figure disappeared behind a turn of the tall yew hedge, "surely Your Majesty will not condemn unheard? . . ."
"No, my lord Cardinal, not unheard," retorted Mary Tudor haughtily. "We have seen strange things to-day, and can only guess at the terrible tangle which caused the first gentleman in England to take upon himself the burden of a heinous crime."
"And no doubt," added Wessex, "that His Eminence can solve the riddle of how a pure and noble girl was led into sacrificing her honour."