With these wild words, he left me. He was gone ere I could speak.
CHAPTER XXVI.
On the night before the 10th of December neither Muriel nor I retired to rest. We sat together by the rush-light, at one time saying prayers, at another speaking together in a low voice. Ever and anon she went to listen at her father's door, for to make sure he slept, and then returned to me. The hours seemed to pass slowly; and yet we should have wished to stay their course, so much we dreaded the first rays of light presaging the tragedy of the coming day. Before the first token of it did show, at about five in the morning, the door-bell rung in a gentle manner.
"Who can be ringing?" I said to Muriel.
"I will go and see," she answered.
But I restrained her, and went, to call one of the servants, who were beginning to bestir themselves. The man went down, and returned, bringing me a paper, on which these words were written:
"MY DEAR CONSTANCE—My lord and myself have secretly come to join our prayers with yours, and, if it should be possible, to receive the blessing of the holy priest who is about to die, as he passeth by your house, toward which, I doubt not, his eyes will of a surety turn. I pray you, therefore, admit us."
I hurried down the stairs, and found Lord and Lady Arundel standing in the hall; she in a cloak and hood, and he with a slouching hat hiding his face. Leading them both into the parlor, which looketh on the street, I had a fire hastily kindled; and for a space her ladyship and myself could only sit holding each other's hands, our hearts being too full to speak. After a while I asked her when she had come to London. She said she had done so very secretly, not to increase the queen's displeasure against her husband; her majesty's misliking of herself continuing as great as ever.
"When she visited my lord last year, before his arrest," quoth she, "on a pane of glass in the dining-room her grace perceived a distich, writ by me in bygone days with a diamond, and which expressed hopes of better fortunes."
"I mind it well," I replied. "Did it not run thus?