Assuredly he would be master soon. Indeed, he might have been master already but for that wife of his, that stumbling-block to his ambition, who practiced the housewifely virtues at Cumnor Place, and clung so tenaciously and so inconsiderately to life in spite of all his plans to relieve her of the burden of it. For a year and more his name had been coupled with the Queen’s in a tale that hurt her honour as a woman and imperilled her dignity as a sovereign. Already in October of 1559 Alvarez de Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, had written home: “I have learnt certain things as to the terms on which the Queen and Lord Robert stand towards each other which I could not have believed.” That was at a time when de Quadra was one of a dozen ambassadors who were competing for her hand, and Lord Robert had, himself, appeared to be an ally of de Quadra and an advocate of the Spanish marriage with the Archduke Charles. But it was a presence which nowise deceived the astute Spaniard, who employed a legion of spies to keep him well informed. “All the dallying with us,” he wrote, “all the dallying with the Swede, all the dallying there will be with the rest, one after another, is merely to keep Lord Robert’s enemies in play until his villainy about his wife can be executed.” What that particular villainy was, the ambassador had already stated earlier in his letter. “I have learnt from a person who usually gives me true information that Lord Robert has sent to have his wife poisoned.” What had actually happened was that Sir Richard Verney—a trusted retainer of Lord Robert’s—had reported to Dr. Bayley, of New College, Oxford, that Lady Robert Dudley was “sad and ailing,” and had asked him for a potion. But the doctor was learned in more matters than physic. He had caught an echo of the tale of Lord Robert’s ambition; he had heard a whisper that whatever suitors might come from overseas for Elizabeth, she would marry none but “my lord”—as Lord Robert was now commonly styled. More, he had aforetime heard rumours of the indispositions of Lady Robert, yet had never found those rumours verified by the fact. Some months ago, it had been reported that her ladyship was suffering from cancer of the breast and likely soon to die of it. Yet Dr. Bayley had reason to know that a healthier woman did not live in Berkshire. The good doctor was a capable deductive reasoner, and the conclusion to which he came was that if they poisoned her under cover of his potion—she standing in no need of physic—he might afterwards be hanged as a cover for their crime. So he refused to prescribe as he was invited, nor troubled to make a secret of invitation and refusal.