It was Mary Hall, she that had been Mary Lascelles. The Queen came over to raise her up, and to ask what it was she sought. But the woman wept so loud, and so continually cried out that her brother was the fiend incarnate, that the Queen could ask no questions. The Lady Mary looked up over her book without stirring her body. Her eyes were awakened and sardonic.
The waiting-maid looked affrightedly over her shoulders at the door.
'Well, your brother shall not come in here,' the Queen said. 'What would he have done to you?'
'Pardon!' the woman cried out. 'Pardon!'
'Why, tell me of your fault,' the Queen said.
'I have given false witness!' Mary Hall blubbered out. 'I would not do it. But you do not know how they confuse a body. And they threaten with cords and thumbscrews.' She shuddered with her whole body. 'Pardon!' she cried out. 'Pardon!'
And then suddenly she poured forth a babble of lamentations, wringing her hands, and rubbing her lips together. She was a woman passed of thirty, but thin still and fair like her brother in the face, for she was his twin.
'Ah,' she cried, 'he threated that if I would not give evidence I must go back to Lincolnshire. You do not know what it is to go back to Lincolnshire. Ah, God! the old father, the old house, the wet. My clothes were all mouldered. I was willing to give true evidence to save myself, but they twisted it to false. It was the Duke of Norfolk ...'
The Lady Mary came slowly over the floor.
'Against whom did you give your evidence?' she said, and her voice was cold, hard, and commanding.