"Nay! masks off, I pray Your Eminence," she said, "that trick just now with your breviary . . . Own to it, man! . . . own to it . . . are you not proud to have tricked Mary Tudor so easily?"
She was trembling with rage, yet looked nigh to bursting into tears. A shade almost of pity crossed His Eminence's cold and clever face. It seemed almost wantonly useless to have aided Fate in snatching a young and handsome lover from this ill-favoured, middle-aged woman.
But the Cardinal never allowed worldly sentiments of any kind to interfere, for more than one or two seconds, with the object he had in view. The look of pity quickly faded from his eyes, giving place to the same mask of respectful deference.
"My breviary?" he said blandly. "Nay! I am still at a loss to understand. . . . Ah, yes! I remember now. . . . I had left it on the balustrade. His Grace of Wessex, a pattern of chivalry, offered to fetch it for me, and——"
"A fine scheme indeed, my lord," interrupted the Queen impatiently, "to send the Duke of Wessex courting after my waiting-maid."
"The Duke of Wessex?" rejoined His Eminence with well-played astonishment. "Nay, methought I spied him just now in the distance, keeping the vows he once made to the Lady Ursula Glynde."
"I pray you do not repeat that silly fairy-tale. His Grace made no promise. 'Twas the Earl of Truro desired the marriage, and the Duke had half forgotten this, until Your Eminence chose to interfere."
"Nay! but Your Majesty does me grave injustice. What have the amours of His Grace of Wessex to do with me, who am the envoy of His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain?"
"'Twere wiser, certainly," retorted Mary coldly, "if the King of Spain's envoy did not concern himself with rousing the Queen of England's anger."
His Eminence smiled as amiably, as unconcernedly as before. Throughout the length of a very distinguished career he had often been obliged to weather storms of royal wrath. He was none the worse for it, and knew how to let the floods of princely anger pass over his shrewd head, without losing grip of the ground on which he stood. Nothing ever ruffled him. Supremely conscious of his own dignity, justly proud of his position and attainments, he had, at the bottom of his heart, a complete contempt for those exalted puppets of his own political schemes. Mary Tudor, a weak and soured woman, an all-too-ready prey of her own passions, swayed hither and thither by her loves and by her hates, was nothing to this proud prince of the Church but a pawn in a European game of chess. It was for his deft fingers to move this pawn in the direction in which he list.