"In your ear, friend . . . 'tis the Lady Ursula Glynde."
Everingham could scarce suppress a movement of intense satisfaction. Lady Ursula! beautiful, exquisite Lady Ursula was the one stumbling-block on which the schemes of his faction might become hopelessly shattered.
Wessex was nominally plighted to the lady. True, 'twas an engagement undertaken by the lady's own father, without the consent of the parties chiefly concerned. But in Tudor England there was a curious adherence to such solemnly plighted troths, which might have proved a bar to the Duke's sense of absolute freedom.
If, however, he looked upon this unnatural and monstrous pledge with the lightness which it fully deserved, if he considered himself at liberty to break the imaginary bonds which held him to Lady Ursula, then the work of his partisans would become comparatively easy.
They had always hoped and fully intended to overcome His Grace's scruples in the matter, and fondly thought that they would succeed. But since the Duke himself looked indifferently upon this so-called troth, why, Everingham himself was the first to feel the keenest satisfaction at the thought.
"You dislike the lady then?" he asked with unfeigned delight.
"I have never seen her," retorted Wessex placidly. "At any rate, not since she was in her cradle. I certainly didn't like her then."
"She is very beautiful," remarked Everingham, with a somewhat shamefaced recollection of his previous adventure, "but——"
"She might be a veritable angel, yet she would frighten me."
A mock shudder passed through his tall, athletic frame, and taking his friend's arm in his, he whispered confidentially, "Think of it, my lord! A woman whom duty compels one to love—Brrr!—Her own father plighted our troth; I am left comparatively free, yet if I do not wed Lady Ursula, she is doomed to end her days in a convent. . . . A matter of honour—what? . . . Yet I—I, who could love any woman," he added emphatically, "be she queen or peasant—that is—h'm!—if I were really put to it—find the very thought of my promised bride abhorrent. She is the one woman in all the world whom I could never love—never! . . . I know it! So I ran away from Court, not because I feared one woman loved me too much, but because I knew I should love one woman too little."