“One word from me to Armstrong will transfer the danger to you. He will break you like a reed.”
“Indeed, my dear, you do yourself injustice in threatening me. You shall have no opportunity of speaking your one word, for when next we meet, if we part now without coming to amicable arrangement, you will be on your knees to me pleading for his life.”
“That will I not. I shall go to the King.”
“Frances, you dishearten me, and cast grave doubts on the possession of that sound sense with which I credited you. Was your first appeal to the King for a man’s life so successful that you build hopes on a second?”
“If Charles had kept his word with me then, he would not now be encaged in Oxford. He abandoned my father and clung to such as you, and not a foot of English ground remains to him but what he stands on.”
“What would have happened had Strafford lived, neither you nor I can tell, and all discussion thereon is aside from our present purpose. Will you make terms with me?”
“I will not.”
“You prefer the dungeon?”
“You dare not imprison me.”
“Why?”