“It is well, sir,” she said, “it is well. We thank you, no less for your pleasant tidings, than the knightly considerations which prompted you to choose so well your opportunity for conveying them to our ear when we were about to set forth in search of such brief pleasure as might for a moment gild the monotony of a prisoner’s life! We thank you, sir, most warmly, and we doubt not your own noble heart will reward you by that best of gifts, a happy and approving conscience! For the rest--lead on! it matters little to the wretched and the captive by what title the prison-bars, which shut them out from light, and liberty, and hope, are dignified; and well do we know that for us there is but one exit from our dungeon, or rest from our calamities--the grave!” She had commenced her speech in that tone of calm and polished raillery for which she had in her earlier days been so renowned, and which even pierced deeper into the feelings of those who writhed beneath it than the most bitter sarcasm; but her concluding sentences were uttered with deep feeling: and, as she turned her liquid eyes toward heaven, it seemed most wonderful that men should exist capable of exciting a single pang in the heart of such a creature. The gates of Fotheringay received her; and, as she rode beneath the gloomy archway, a prophetic chill fell upon her soul, and she felt that here her wanderings and her sorrows would shortly be brought to a close! Scarcely had she reached the miserable privacy of her chamber, when steps were heard without. Mildmay, Paulet, and Barker, entered, and delivering a letter full of hypocritical regrets and feigned affection, informed her that the queen’s commissioners were even then assembled in the castle-hall, and prayed the lady Mary to descend and refute the foul charges preferred against her name. Enfeebled as she had been by sufferings and sorrows, wearied by her long and rapid journey, and, above all things, crushed by this last blow, it little seemed that so frail and delicate a form could have contained a soul so mighty as flashed forth in one blaze of indignation. Her pale cheek crimsoned, her sunken eye glared with unwonted fire; she started upon her feet, her limbs trembling, not with terror or debility, but with strong and terrible excitement.