"Why! brother, I will leave it to my Lord Bishop of York if you did not promise me that day, in this very room, and almost on this very spot, that if I would marry Louis of France I might marry whomsoever I wished when he should die. Of course you knew, after what I had said, whom I should choose, so I went to a little church in company with Queen Claude, and took my hair down and married him, and I am his wife, and no power on earth can make it otherwise," and she looked up into his face with a defiant little pout, as much as to say, "Now, what are you going to do about it?"
Henry looked at her in surprise and then burst out laughing. "Married to Brandon with your hair down?" And he roared again, holding his sides. "Well, you do beat the devil; there's no denying that. Poor old Louis! That was a good joke on him. I'll stake my crown he was glad to die! You kept it warm enough for him, I make no doubt."
"Well," said Mary, with a little shrug of her shoulders, "he would marry me."
"Yes, and now poor Brandon doesn't know the trouble ahead of him, either. He has my pity, by Jove!"
"Oh, that is different," returned Mary, and her eyes burned softly, and her whole person fairly radiated, so expressive was she of the fact that "it was different."
Different? Yes, as light from darkness; as love from loathing; as heaven from the other place; as Brandon from Louis; and that tells it all.
Henry turned to Wolsey: "Have you ever heard anything equal to it, my Lord Bishop?"
My Lord Bishop, of course, never had; nothing that even approached it.
"What are we to do about it?" continued Henry, still addressing Wolsey.
