“Wretch!” cried the Duke, regarding the old woman fiercely. “You have deceived me. But the device shall avail you little. From the scaffold I will expose the snare in which I have been taken. I will proclaim my Protestant opinions; and my dying declaration will be of more profit to that faith than my recent recantation can be to yours.”
“Your grace is mistaken,” rejoined Gunnora. “I do not deserve your reproaches, as I will presently show. I am the bearer of a pardon to you.”
“A pardon!” exclaimed Northumberland, incredulously.
“Ay, a pardon,” replied the old woman. “The Queen’s highness will spare your life. But it is her pleasure that her clemency be as public as your crime. You will be reprieved on the scaffold.”
“Were I assured of this,” cried Northumberland, eagerly grasping at the straw held out to him, “I would exhort the whole multitude to embrace the Catholic faith.”
“Rest satisfied of it, then,” replied Gunnora. “May I perish at the same moment as yourself if I speak not the truth!”
“Whom have we here?” inquired the Duke, turning to the muffled personage. “The headsman?”
“Your enemy,” replied the individual, throwing aside his mantle, and disclosing the features of Simon Renard.
“It is but a poor revenge to insult a fallen foe,” observed Northumberland, disdainfully.
“Revenge is sweet, however obtained,” rejoined Renard. “I am not come, however, to insult your grace, but to confirm the truth of this old woman’s statement. Opposed as I am to you, and shall ever be, I would not have you forfeit your life by a new and vile apostacy. Abjure the Catholic faith, and you will die unpitied by all. Maintain it; and at the last moment, when the arm of the executioner is raised, and the axe gleams in the air—when the eyes of thousands are fixed on it—sovereign mercy will arrest the blow.”