"Even now I know not truly how it befell," he continued sadly. "The poor child was overwrought. She bandied words with the chief justice, she defied him. He is not a man to brook defiance, and he revenged himself. But 'tis not likely they will carry out their sentence. Money can do much, influence more. We will talk it over together. Perchance you might go to London, 'tis not to be doubted but his Majesty will have pity upon her youth. You must see the Queen; she will surely show mercy to a woman. I will do what I can to work upon my Lord Jeffreys; I have friends who have some influence over his lordship, and they say money can do much; I doubt not she shall soon be pardoned. Come, my child, we must be brave; we must not despair."
He patted her hand kindly, full of pity for her misery. Cicely listened to all in a strange apathy.
"No," she muttered dully, "no, we must not despair, not despair."
Then she turned from him slowly and mounted the stairs to her room in perfect silence.
Master Lane looked after her anxiously.
"Poor thing! Poor thing!" he muttered, his eyes glistening with tears. "'Tis hard indeed for her. Very hard."
Then he turned to find his wife, feeling his helplessness in the face of this strange, silent misery, and seeking to ease his mind of the burden of a sorrow he could neither grapple with nor relieve.
Cicely paced her room dry-eyed, trembling, striving to realise this horror which had befallen them, striving to picture the execution of such a sentence upon her tender, beautiful young cousin. She could not do so. She repeated the words of the sentence again and again till they jangled through her brain, yet she could not believe it, she remained unmoved.
Then suddenly there flashed across her mind the question: "How shall I face Rupert and tell him this?"
And on the instant her strange apathy vanished, on the instant she understood the full horror of the sentence.