Hal decided to throw the physician and Anthony off guard by coming at his news indirectly. So he answered Sir Valentine:
"I am a stage player."
Sir Valentine opened eyes and mouth in amazement; he gasped and stared.
"A stage player!" he echoed, horrified. "Thy father's son a stage player! A Marryott a stage player! Sir, sir, you have fallen low! Blessed Mary, what are the times? A gentleman turn stage player!"
Old Anthony had drawn back from Hal, vastly scandalized, his eyes raised heavenward as if for divine protection from contamination; and the physician gazed, in a kind of passionless curiosity.
"A stage player," said Hal, firmly, having taken his resolution, "may prove himself still a gentleman. He may have a gentleman's sense of old friendship shown, and a gentleman's honesty to repay it, as I have when I come to save thee from the privy council's men riding hither to arrest thee for high treason! And a gentleman's authority, as I have when I bid this doctor and this Anthony to aid thy escape, and betray or hinder it not, on pain of deeper wounds than thine!" And Hal, having drawn his sword, stood with his back to the doorway.
Sir Valentine himself was the first to speak; he did so with quiet gravity:
"Art quite sure of this, Harry?"
"Quite, Sir Valentine. We stage players consort with possessors of state secrets, now and then. The warrant for thy apprehension was signed this day. A council's pursuivant was to leave London at three o'clock, with men to assure thy seizure. I, bearing in mind my family's debt to thine, and mine own to thee, started at two, to give thee warning. More than that, I swear to save thee. This arrest, look you, means thy death; from what I heard, I perceive thy doom is prearranged; thy trial is to be a pretence."
"I can believe that!" said Sir Valentine, with a grim smile.