“Mistress Feversham”--the harsh voice seemed to assault their ears, so sharp it was, so merciless--“I am given to understand you are a woman. But let me say that, in the moment I saw you first, I knew that you were that.” Here the voice fell away with the oddest suddenness. A tense moment passed in which it seemed that the sovereign could hardly trust herself to speak. “And, by God, you are a brave woman! ... a very brave woman, even if you are a very froward one.” The Queen turned abruptly to the Lord Treasurer. There was a sour and cruel smile on the thin lips. “Do we understand,” she said, “that there is a boon Mistress Feversham would crave at our hands?” A silence followed the question--a silence in which Elizabeth and her minister looked without pity upon the shrinking pair who stood before them. In the next instant, Anne had cast herself on her knees at the Queen’s feet. But it was left to Gervase to speak. And he spoke as one who proudly asks a favor to which he feels he has clearly established a claim. “Your grace.” The young man sank to his knees. “We crave of your mercy that we be permitted to die together.” The Queen’s answer was a swift glance at the Lord Treasurer. And then, perhaps, it may have been that she felt a sudden sting of remorse for the cruel nature of the play she was enacting. Yet the face of her adviser was as cold as stone. It bore no trace of feeling. And it may have been that such an impassiveness smote the heart of one who, after all, was a woman, with all a woman’s emotions. Involuntarily, as it seemed, the Queen turned her eyes from Cecil toward that other, that more human witness of the scene. Unconsciously, as if at the beck of an invisible power, her imperious gaze sought the mild one of him whose life was passed in the making of plays. His face, averted from a sight it could not endure, was melted with tears. Of a sudden, something stirred in the Queen’s heart. It was such a pang of nature as had not touched it for many a long year. The time was surely at hand in which to make an end of the cruel comedy. Upon a quick impulse in which the woman alone bore a part, and the tyrannical arbitress of life and death had no share, she raised the unhappy girl in her arms and gravely kissed her on the forehead. “You are a brave thing,” cried the harsh, rough voice. “By God, you are a brave thing. You shall suffer no more. Our pardon shall be granted to you, and also to this young man against whom as we are informed----” But the sentence so fraught with destiny was never finished. The frail form had grown stiff and cold in the arms of the Queen. CHAPTER XL