She looked so helpless and feeble as she sat in the window seat, stripped now of its tapestry cushions, with the roofs of the New Building rising among its trees at the back, where her husband had walked a year ago with such delight, that Ralph felt a touch of compunction, and promised to do his best.
He said a word to Cromwell that evening as he supped with him at Hackney, and his master looked at him curiously, sitting forward in the carved chair he had had from Wolsey, in his satin gown, twisting the stem of his German glass in his ringed fingers.
“And what do you wish me to do, sir?” he asked Ralph with a kind of pungent irony.
Ralph explained that he scarcely knew himself; perhaps a word to his Grace—
“I will tell you what it is, Mr. Torridon,” broke in his master, “you have made another mistake. I did not intend you to be their friend, but to seem so.”
“I can scarcely seem so,” said Ralph quietly, but with a certain indignation at his heart, “unless I do them little favours sometimes.”
“You need not seem so any longer,” said Cromwell drily, “the time is past.”
And he set his glass down and sat back.
Yet Ralph’s respect and admiration for his master became no less. He had the attractiveness of extreme and unscrupulous capability. It gave Ralph the same joy to watch him as he found in looking on at an expert fencer; he was so adroit and strong and ready; mighty and patient in defence, watchful for opportunities of attack and merciless when they came. His admirers scarcely gave a thought to the piteousness of the adversary; they were absorbed in the scheme and proud to be included in it; and men of heart and sensibility were as hard as their master when they carried out his plans.