Lady Jane smiled.
'Well done, little Margery!' she said, adding, 'Now tell me how you managed to get into the Tower.'
I told her, upon which she remarked—
'You see Mary has a good heart—you touched it with your singing, and she allowed you to come to me,' adding, to my delight, 'To have you with me is the one thing I wanted, next to my natural wish to be with my husband. They have separated us, you know, Margery. He is imprisoned in another tower.'
'It is hard,' I said.
'And I have great anxiety about him,' went on my dear lady. 'Doubtless the priests are endeavouring to convert him to Romanism, and since they succeeded with his father——'
'Madame, did the Duke of Northumberland give up his faith?'
'Yes,' she answered sadly. 'He was not brave, not heroic; he gave way on all sides when death was imminent. But they have killed him. He is dead, and we must say nothing, except good, of the dead.'
She quoted a Latin proverb to that effect,[[1]] but it was strange to my ears, and I have so far forgotten it as not to be able to write it down.
[[1]] De mortuis nil nisi bonum.—ED.