Mary clapped her hands.
“I like to hear a man talk like that,” she cried. “But what of the Holy Father and his excommunication of her Grace?”
Anthony looked up at her sharply, and then smiled; Isabel watched him with a troubled face.
“Aquinas holds,” he said, “that an excommunication of sovereign and people in a lump is invalid. And until the Holy Father tells me himself that Aquinas is wrong, I shall continue to think he is right.”
“God-a-mercy!” burst in Mr. Buxton, “what a to-do! Leave it alone until the choice must be made; and meanwhile say your prayers for Pope and Queen too, and hear mass and tell your beads and hold your tongue: that is what I say to myself. Mistress Mary, I will not have my chaplain heckled; here is his lady sister all a-tremble between heresy and treason.”
They sat long over the supper-table, talking over the last six years and the times generally. More than once Mary showed a strange bitterness against the Queen. At last Mr. Buxton showed his astonishment plainly.
“I do not understand you,” he said. “I know that at heart you are loyal; and yet one might say you meditated her murder.”
Mary’s face grew white with passion and her eyes blazed.
“Ah!” she hissed, “you do not understand, you say? Then where is your heart? But then you did not see Mary Stuart die.”
Anthony looked at her, amazed.