“How can you know? ’Twould be a warm meeting,” he said, and stood still laughing when Henge closed the door upon him.
At Deptford, on that fair nineteenth of May, the household at Wildrick waited for tidings. In the warm sunshine they stood upon the terrace facing the river,—old Madam, Sir William Carew, Betty, and Lord Raby.
“There was some confession to my lord of Canterbury,” Carew said, walking to and fro and looking curiously at the river; “’tis hoped that a bill of divorcement may save the sentence.”
“If she be guilty, she deserves the sentence,” remarked Lady Crabtree, sternly; “if she be innocent, she should stand acquitted. She was tried by her peers.”
“I would it were not a woman,” Sir William said uneasily. “I like not the death on the block of a woman and a queen.”
“Would you rather burn her?” asked old Madam, coolly. “I know not why a woman, being wrong, should be less punished than a man, or more so. Men are quick enough to break a woman’s heart, but over-squeamish about breaking her neck.”
“Yonder comes your messenger,” Lord Raby said, pointing to the river, where a wherry had stopped at the water-gate and a manservant in Lady Crabtree’s livery was seen disembarking.
The messenger came up the terrace, and pausing in front of the group who waited so eagerly for tidings, he lifted his cap.
“The Lady Anne Boleyn died on the Tower green at noon to-day,” he said in a monotonous tone; “the king’s grace will wed to-morrow the worshipful lady, Jane Seymour. Parliament will meet to pass a new Act of Succession.”