"You have not yet heard what I propose," she cried, her voice shrill with anger. "It is a trifle, and to please me you might well do it. Set your hand to a note which I will see delivered in the proper quarter; promising nothing in the Prince's life-time--there! but only that in the event of his death you will support a Restoration." "I cannot do it," he answered. "Cannot do it?" she rejoined with heat. "Why not? You have done as much before." "It maybe: and been forgiven for it by the best master man ever had!" "Who feels nothing, forgives easily," she sneered. "But not twice," he said gravely. "The King----" "Which King?" "The only King I acknowledge," he answered, unmoved. "Who knows, believe me, so much more than you give him credit for, that it were well if your friends bethought them of that before it be too late. He has winked at much and forgiven more--no one knows it better than I--but he is not blinded; and there is a point, madam, beyond which he can be as steadfast to punish as your King. If Sir John Fenwick, therefore, who I know well, is in England----" But at that she cut him short, carried away by a passion, which she had curbed as long as it was in her impetuous nature to curb anything. "Odds my life!" she cried, and at the sound of her voice uplifted in a shriek of anger, the woman listening beside me raised her face to mine, and smiled cruelly--"Odds my life, your King and my King! Kings indeed! Why, mannikin, how many Kings do you think there are! By G--d, Master Charles, you will learn one of these days that there is but one King, sent by God, one King and no more, and that his yea and nay are life and death! You fool, you! I tell you, you are trembling on the edge, you are tottering! A day, a week, a month, at most, and you fall--unless you clutch at the chance of safety I offer you! Sign the note! Sign the note, man! No one but the King and Middleton shall know of it; and when the day comes, as come it will, it shall avail you." "Never, madam," was the cold and unmoved answer. So much I heard and my lady's oath and volley of abuse; but in the midst of this, and while she still raged, my companion, satisfied I suppose with what she had learned, and assured that her lady would not get her way, twitched my sleeve, and softly taking up the lamp, signed to me to go before her. I obeyed nothing loth, and regaining the small ante-room by which I had entered, found the man Smith awaiting us. When they had whispered together, "I'll see you home, Mr. Taylor," said he, somewhat grimly. "And to-morrow I will call and talk business. What we want you to do is a very simple matter." "It is simply that my lady's son is a fool!" the woman cried, snappishly. "Well," he said, smiling, "I should hardly call my Lord Shrewsbury that!" The woman screamed and clapped her hand to his mouth. "You babbling idiot!" she cried, in a passion. "You have let it out." He stood gaping. "Good lord!" he said.