“God bless you!” he cried, catching her in his arms and kissing her; “I have no right to ask such a pledge of you!”
“You asked not,” she said archly; “I gave it. Hark! there comes the warder; doubtless our time is expired. I pray you think better of my uncle; I love him. He is a blunt man and too free-spoken, but he is true as steel.”
“Dear Betty,” the prisoner whispered fondly, “if he were a monster, I would try to love him for your sake.”
“Come, niece!” called Sir William, impatiently, “we must be gone; the warder is here.”
“I must go,” Betty said, tearing herself away from her lover’s detaining arms; “I must go, but surely will I work for your deliverance with all my might, and so shall my uncle. Farewell—oh, farewell till we meet again!”
Her eyes were shining now with tears, and there was a third summons from Sir William before she parted from the prisoner, and ran from the room, drawing her mantle over her face.
When they sat again in the boat, Carew turned to her with a grim face, but there was a kind light in his eyes.
“My wench,” he said bluntly, “thou art a fool, but I love thee.”
CHAPTER XXV
A SEASON OF WAITING
Lord Raby was arrested in June, and at the time there seemed to be an immediate prospect of a trial, and he looked forward to it with the earnest hope of establishing his innocence. But he was doomed to a far different fate; he and his fellow prisoner, the wizard, were held while Cromwell slowly unravelled the threads of a great conspiracy, which had been only partially indicated by the papers in the mysterious packet. It was not good policy to seize at once upon men whose names figured in the documents, some of them the foremost in the land, and the privy seal played the waiting game, in which he was an adept. The slow months of the summer passed, and with Michaelmas came the rising in the northern counties, ostensibly provoked by the visitation of the monasteries, but really the outgrowth of many grievances, and the full fruit of a long-planned conspiracy. The Pilgrimage of Grace doomed Lord Raby to a long confinement. With this example of the result of treasonable machinations before his eyes, Cromwell had less mercy for those accused of direct complicity in it. As the rebels, under Robert Aske, advanced to Doncaster, threatening to overwhelm the king’s small army, the prisoners in the Tower were subjected to closer confinement. One of the avowed purposes of the insurgents was the fall of Cromwell, and it was not probable that he would be lenient to such offenders as were within his reach. It was, however, an inconvenient time for trial of the prisoners, and Raby and Sanders remained in suspense.