"I will go and see," she answered.
But I restrained her, and went, to call one of the servants, who were beginning to bestir themselves. The man went down, and returned, bringing me a paper, on which these words were written:
"MY DEAR CONSTANCE—My lord and myself have secretly come to join our prayers with yours, and, if it should be possible, to receive the blessing of the holy priest who is about to die, as he passeth by your house, toward which, I doubt not, his eyes will of a surety turn. I pray you, therefore, admit us."
I hurried down the stairs, and found Lord and Lady Arundel standing in the hall; she in a cloak and hood, and he with a slouching hat hiding his face. Leading them both into the parlor, which looketh on the street, I had a fire hastily kindled; and for a space her ladyship and myself could only sit holding each other's hands, our hearts being too full to speak. After a while I asked her when she had come to London. She said she had done so very secretly, not to increase the queen's displeasure against her husband; her majesty's misliking of herself continuing as great as ever.
"When she visited my lord last year, before his arrest," quoth she, "on a pane of glass in the dining-room her grace perceived a distich, writ by me in bygone days with a diamond, and which expressed hopes of better fortunes."
"I mind it well," I replied. "Did it not run thus?
'Not seldom doth the sun sink down In brightest light
Which rose at early dawn disfigured quite outright;
So shall my fortunes, wrapt so long in darkest night,
Revive, and show ere long an aspect clear and bright.'"
"Yea," she answered. "And now listen to what her majesty, calling for a like instrument, wrote beneath:
'Not seldom do vain hopes deceive a silly heart
Let all each witless dreams now vanish and depart;
For fortune shall ne'er shine, I promise thee, on one
Whose folly hath for aye all hopes thereof undone.'