It was too true. Commendone knew it well. He looked at Hull, and together they both looked at Elizabeth Taylor.
The girl, in the long white robe which they had put on her, rose from her seat and came between them, tall, slim, and now composed. She put one hand upon Johnnie's shoulder and laid the other with an affectionate gesture upon Hull's arm.
"Look you," she said, "Mr. Commendone, and you, John Hull, my father's friend, what matters it at all? I see now all that hath passed. There is no hope for us, none at all. Therefore let us praise God, pray to Him, and die. We shall soon be with my father in heaven; and, sure, he seeth all this, and is waiting for us."
John Hull's face was knitted into thought. He hardly seemed to hear the girl's voice at all.
"Mistress Lizzie," he said, almost peevishly, "pr'ythee be silent a moment. Master, look you. 'Tis this way. They will come again and find His Highness when he returneth not to the Tower, but he will dare do nothing against us openly for fear of the Queen's Grace. Were it known that he had come to such a stew as this, the Queen would ne'er give him her confidence again. She would ne'er forgive him. Doubtless the vengeance will pursue us, but it cannot be put in motion for some hours until the King is rescued, and has had time to confer with his familiars and think out a plan. After that, when they catch us, nothing will avail us, because nothing we can say will be believed. But we are not caught yet."
Johnnie, who for the last few moments had been quite without hope, looked up quickly at his servant's words.
"You are right," he said, "in what you say; there speaketh good sense. Very well, then we must get away at once. But where shall we go? If we go to His Worship's house, we shall soon be discovered, and bring His Worship and Mistress Catherine with us to the rack and stake. If we go to my father's house in Kent, he will not be able to hide us; it will be the first place to which they will look."
He spread his arms out in a gesture of despair.
"You see," he said, "we in this room to-night have no refuge nor harbour. For a few hours, a day it may be, we can lie lost from vengeance. But after that no earthly power can save us. We have done the thing for which there is no pardon."
"I don't like, master, to wait for death in this way," Hull answered. "But art wiser than I, and so it must be. But pr'ythee let us have a little course. The hounds may come, but let us run before them, and then, if death is at the end of it, well—well, there's an end on't; and so say I."