"What are you doing with those gentlemen?" cried Mary, sharply reining in her horse, as she saw Nau and Curll surrounded by the armed men.
"They will be dealt with after her Majesty's pleasure," returned Paulett.
Mary dropped her rein and threw up her hands with a gesture of despair, but as Gorges was leading her away, she turned on her saddle, and raised her voice to call out, "Farewell, my true and faithful servants! Betide what may, your mistress will remember you in her prayers. Curll, we will take care of your wife."
And she waved her hand to them as they were made, with a strong guard, to ride off in the direction of Lichfield. All the way to Tickhill, whither she was conducted with Gorges and Paulett on either side of her horse, Cis could hear her pleading for consideration for poor Barbara Curll, for whose sake she forgot her own dignity and became a suppliant.
Sir Walter Ashton, a dull heavy-looking country gentleman of burly form and ruddy countenance, stood at his door, and somewhat clownishly offered his services to hand her from her horse.
She submitted passively till she had reached the upper chamber which had been prepared for her, and there, turning on the three gentlemen, demanded the meaning of this treatment.
"You will soon know, madam," said Paulett. "I am sorry that thus it should be."
"Thus!" repeated Mary, scornfully. "What means this?"
"It means, madam," said Gorges, a ruder man of less feeling even than Paulett, "that your practices with recusants and seminary priests have been detected. The traitors are in the Counter, and will shortly be brought to judgment for the evil purposes which have been frustrated by the mercy of Heaven."
"It is well if treason against my good sister's person have been detected and frustrated," said Mary; "but how doth that concern me?"