'Why,' the King said pleasantly to Jenkins, a guard with a blond and shaven face whom he liked well, 'let us set this gentleman against the wall in the ante-room till his bed be come. He hath earned gentle usage, since he hasted much, bringing my message from Scotland to the Queen, and is very ill.' So, helping his guard gently to conduct the drunkard into his wife's dark ante-room, the King came out again to his wife. 'Is it well done?' he asked. 'Marvellous well done,' she answered. 'I am the man for these difficult times!' he answered, and was glad. The Queen sighed a little. For if she admired and wondered at her lord's power skilfully to have his way, it made her sad to think--as she must think--that so devious was man's work. 'I would,' she said, 'that it was not to such an occasion that I spurred thee.' Her eyes, being cast downwards, fell upon the Lady Rochford, by the table. 'Ho, get up,' she cried. 'You have feigned fainting long enough. But for you all this had been more easy. I would have you relieve mine eyes of the sight of your face.' She moved to aid the old woman to rise, but before she was upon her knees there stood without the door both the Lord d'Espahn and the Archbishop. They had waited just beyond the corridor-end with a great many of the other lords, all afraid of mysteries they knew not what, and thus it was that they came so soon upon the young Poins' summoning. II The King thought fit to change his mood, so that it was with uplifted brows and a quizzing smile at the corners of his mouth that for a minute he greeted these frightened lords in the doorway. They stood there silent, the Archbishop very dejected, the Lord d'Espahn, with his grey beard, very erect and ruddy featured. 'Why, God help me,' the King said, 'what make of Court is this of mine where a King may not send a messenger to his wife?' The Archbishop swallowed in his throat; the Lord d'Espahn did not speak but gazed before him. 'You shall tell me what befell, for I am ignorant,' the King said; 'but first I will tell you what I do know. 'Why, come out with me into the corridor, wife,' he cried over his shoulder. 'For it is not fitting that these lords come into thy apartment. I will walk with them and talk.' He took the Archbishop by the elbow and the Lord d'Espahn by the upper arm, and, leaning upon them, propelled them gently before him. 'Thus it was,' he said; 'this cousin of my wife's was in the King o' Scots' good town of Edinboro'. And, being there, he was much upon my conscience--for I would not have a cousin of my wife's be there in exile, he being one that formerly much fended for her....' He spoke out his words and repeated these things for his own purposes, the Queen following behind. When they were come to the corridor-end, there he found, as he had thought, a knot of lords and gentlemen, babbling with their ears pricked up. 'Nay, stay,' he said, 'this is a matter that all may hear.'