But at that she cut him short, carried away by a passion, which she had curbed as long as it was in her impetuous nature to curb anything. "Odds my life!" she cried, and at the sound of her voice uplifted in a shriek of anger, the woman listening beside me raised her face to mine, and smiled cruelly--"Odds my life, your King and my King! Kings indeed! Why, mannikin, how many Kings do you think there are! By G--d, Master Charles, you will learn one of these days that there is but one King, sent by God, one King and no more, and that his yea and nay are life and death! You fool, you! I tell you, you are trembling on the edge, you are tottering! A day, a week, a month, at most, and you fall--unless you clutch at the chance of safety I offer you! Sign the note! Sign the note, man! No one but the King and Middleton shall know of it; and when the day comes, as come it will, it shall avail you."
"Never, madam," was the cold and unmoved answer.
So much I heard and my lady's oath and volley of abuse; but in the midst of this, and while she still raged, my companion, satisfied I suppose with what she had learned, and assured that her lady would not get her way, twitched my sleeve, and softly taking up the lamp, signed to me to go before her. I obeyed nothing loth, and regaining the small ante-room by which I had entered, found the man Smith awaiting us.
When they had whispered together, "I'll see you home, Mr. Taylor," said he, somewhat grimly. "And to-morrow I will call and talk business. What we want you to do is a very simple matter."
"It is simply that my lady's son is a fool!" the woman cried, snappishly.
"Well," he said, smiling, "I should hardly call my Lord Shrewsbury that!"
The woman screamed and clapped her hand to his mouth. "You babbling idiot!" she cried, in a passion. "You have let it out."
He stood gaping. "Good lord!" he said.
"You have let it out with a vengeance now!" she repeated, furiously.
He looked foolish; and at last, "He did not hear," he said.