Lady Arabella smiled.
"I cannot tell, but I believe he is beyond the reach of his enemies and mine."
LONDON TOWER FROM THE RIVER.
So she was marched to the Tower, into rooms once occupied by Margaret Douglas, the common grandmother of the King and herself.
When brought before the Lords she was mild and patient, yet asked with becoming spirit why she, a free woman of royal blood, should be held a criminal and separated from her lawful husband.
The furious King seized her jewels and money; and her two companions in the flight, gentlemen by birth, were dragged to the torture-chamber of the Tower, and forced to confess what they knew of the perilous attempt.
The tale of Seymour's changes of wig and cloak, in various disguises and places, is too long to tell here. Delighted with liberty and with France, he seemed to mourn the loss of his bride less than the loss of her jewels and money, for William dearly loved to loiter in the delicate plain called Ease, and lie in the soft places gold can buy. The calculating fellow found his high name a passport in Paris, which city was vastly amusing, and so was the staid but not less delightful capital of the Belgians.
In the damp old rooms of her grandmother Lady Arabella languished five years. The third year an escape was arranged, and when the time was ripe and success appeared assured she was betrayed, and the venture ended in nothing but harsher treatment. While "William, dearest," danced the night away, she wore out the dark hours writing prayers to the King, who deigned no answer.
Like other high-born dames, she was skilled in cunning needle-work, and many a doleful day was spent stitching gay silks into canvas, making a bright broidery, offered as a souvenir to the man who imprisoned her; but the King would not touch the pretty gift. The courtesy did not move him any more than her demand to be tried by her peers, according to law, in open-court, instead of by a Committee of the Council sitting with closed doors.