'If he has it shall be restored to him. The great patron of the divine arts, the illustrious advocate of public singers, the glorious supporter of divine architecture, the magnificent exhibitor of all that is great, noble, praiseworthy, and splendid in the worship of the Virgin, the angels, and the saints, shall not want a friend in me, though hereabouts there may want an example of fire and faggot to exterminate his enemies. Where is thine abode in these parts, Master Cavendish?' 'I am but a traveller, a visitor, a mere bearer of a message to my lord's friend.' 'And what was it, Master Secretary, what was it? Ha! did the little man want anything from Alice De Clinton?' Cavendish marvelled indeed at the hauteur of this quondam subservient mistress of the Cardinal, his master; and within his soul, faithful as it was to a kind-hearted individual who was ever gracious to him, it revolted at the contumacy with which she, the exalted lady of Wolsey's notice, now dared to treat his memory. His memory of his master rose triumphant, and his remembrance, too, of the estimation in which Ellen was held by him came with lively impression to his mind, and he could not help punishing the haughty Alice with a declaration which he little expected she would so quickly resent. With gratitude in his heart, a far more active agent at that moment than political prudence or cautious wisdom, he replied-- 'I am upon a visit to Lord De Freston, the Lady Ellen, and Latimer.' The haughty lady looked as if she would annihilate him with one fierce glance of her serpent eye. She rose without forgetting for a moment that she was treating a stranger, or a former friend, in her own house. She rose stately, coolly, slowly, erected her head just as a serpent of the most stupendous kind might do previous to her all determined rush upon her victim, and something more than a hiss from her forked tongue issued from her throat: 'Then how darest thou to tread the threshold of Goldwell Hall? Knowest thou not that between the daughters of Rome and those of the Devil there can be no alliance? and darest thou to contaminate with thy polluted feet the hall of the faithful, after having been an inmate of the tomb of an heretic? 'Perish, traitor, perish!--back, go back to Freston Tower! Look thence upon the birth-place of thy master; but know thou that ere another year shall sweep over the heads of those whom now thou dost call thine host, hostess, and friend, their power shall perish if they be not themselves departed.' The very words, gesture, and cold-blooded determination of the impenetrable marble then before him, had an effect of creating a chill upon his whole frame; and he felt how truly his friends on the opposite bank of the Orwell had described the being who then stood before him.