"Why, if your Majesty really wishes to know," replied Maxwell, "and will condescend to promise not to tell my Lord of Rochester, I will relate all that has just happened; and you will soon see how faithful a servant is this Sir Thomas Overbury, who must needs contradict what I told you, sire, of Mr. Seymour and the Lady Arabella meeting in the grounds at Theobalds."
"Speak, man, speak!" cried the King, "I'll keep counsel as close as a wilk. You have our commands, sir; so you will be harmless."
"Well, then, sire, just now as I was walking along the cloister----" answered Maxwell.
"Call it the arcade," said the King; "cloister is a popish word."
"Well, sire, as I was walking along the arcade," continued Maxwell, "I saw a maid belonging to the Lady Arabella, carrying a note in her hand. Now, I had just passed good Sir Thomas Overbury; and a fancy struck me, I do not know why, that all was not right;--for all the Court, you know, say he is playing double with your Majesty. So I asked the girl to let me see the note; and, after much ado, I got her to consent. Well, there, sire, I saw Sir Thomas's own writing, somewhat twisted and turned to disguise it, but clear enough for all that; and, in the inside, was written a warning to the lady to fly from the Court with all speed. He engaged she should have an hour clear; and therefore it was I said there would be mistakes enough, and delays enough, before the warrants are ready."
"The false loon," cried the King, "the whelp of a traitor!--But we'll circumvent him. Run, Maxwell, run! Put a guard at the foot of each staircase that leads from her rooms and the Lady Shrewsbury's.--Fegs! they might have put out the 'bury,' and left the 'Shrew.'--Tell the guard to let no one pass out.--Run, man! run!--Speak not, but away!"
Maxwell obeyed the King's command, and hurried out of the cabinet; and James, casting himself into a chair, gave way to a fit of laughter, in the first place, at the thought of having circumvented Overbury. He soon returned, however, to the thought of the Knight's offences; and he rolled himself about, with much of that awkward air of indignation which the accounts of African travellers ascribe to the angry hippopotamus.
"The deceitful pagan!" he cried; "the treacherous dog! I'll punish him for forgetting his duty to God's anointed.--But softly, softly! He has too many secrets. We will deal gently with him.--Those cunning Romans, when they were about to punish a great malefactor, took him up to a high place, before they hurled him headlong down, that he might break his neck by the fall; which is a wise and good example to modern Kings, who may make such men's ambition the Tarpeian rock, from the highest point of which, they may get a fall when they least look for it."
[CHAPTER XXX.]
With a pale face, and trembling limbs, Arabella entered the apartments of the Countess of Shrewsbury, and, unable to speak, in her alarm she laid Sir Thomas Overbury's note upon a small round table before her, and pointed to it with her finger.