So spoke the marquis, and Betty, hearing him, felt a chill at her heart. The gloomy life had weighed upon her, and she fell often into meditations which were full of dim foreboding. The wizard’s tale had stolen into her brain and found a lodgment there, and she dreaded something, what she knew not. Youth is fanciful, and sees either a flood of sunshine on the path or a thick cloud. While the shadows without lengthened into night, Betty sat alone; and then there was a soft footfall behind her, and Patience came to summon her to the queen. Something in the woman’s face betrayed that the call was unusual, and Mistress Carew was yet more surprised when she found herself alone with Catherine, who sat propped up in her chair, a rosary in her hands and her black mantilla shading her features even more than usual. The lights were so arranged that her face was in the gloom, and it was impossible to see her expression.
“My visitors are still below, as I hear, Mistress Betty,” she said quietly, “and I would ask you to do an errand for me. Here is a little packet which, I pray you, give my lord of Exeter from the queen. These gentlemen will look askance at my own poor maids, but you, my child, are in favor with the powers that be.”
Betty stood a moment irresolute, her heart beating high. The hour had come for her to show herself worthy of her uncle’s confidence. She could not deceive herself about the packet; it was the same which the wizard had let fall a few weeks before. She was silent, her eyes downcast.
“What ails you, mistress?” cried the queen, sharply; “have you no tongue to answer me?”
“Madam,” replied Betty, her tone faltering ever so slightly, “I may not disobey my instructions.”
“Your instructions!” repeated Catherine, sternly; “from whom—and when?”
Mistress Betty’s cheek was scarlet. How could she speak the truth to this injured woman, although the truth was not to her own discredit? Her embarrassment carried conviction to the queen’s mind, and she was passionately incensed.
“So!” she said, in her coldest and most sarcastic tone, “the dove was but the serpent in disguise. For shame! How could one so young, so seeming innocent, become a tool in the hands of villains? Had you no woman’s heart that you could spy upon and betray a woman—and she your queen? My God! the very babes and sucklings are utterly corrupted, vile traitors and heretics!”
“Madam,” Betty cried, with deep resentment, “you do me bitter wrong! I am no spy, nor would my uncle have sent me to fill so foul an office. I cannot—nay, I will not carry secret missives against my instructions! That would be as deep a treason to this realm as it would be to you did I purpose to betray you.”
“You say ‘I will not’ to your queen?” exclaimed Catherine, harshly; “the saints bear witness that the time was when so saucy a tongue would have been treason. It is well to make fine protests, wench, but ’twill be long ere you find one so foolish as to credit them.”