"No."
"Well," said Lady Sunderland restlessly, "we are safe enough."
He was turning over the papers, and now lowered his eyes to them.
"Some of your letters to my Uncle Sidney have been opened," he remarked. "This is M. Barillon his work—the King taxed me to-day with being privy to the intrigue."
"I have thought lately that we were suspected," she answered quickly. "Is this—serious?"
"No; I can do anything with the King, and he is bigot, blind, and credulous to a monstrous degree."
"Even after to-day!" exclaimed my lady.
"He believeth the nation will never turn against him," said the Earl quietly. "He thinketh himself secure in his heir—and in the Tories."
"Not half the people will allow the child is the Queen's, though," she answered. "Even the Princess Anne maketh a jest of it with her women, and saith His Highness was smuggled into Whitehall in a warming-pan by a Jesuit father——"
"So you have also heard that news?"