"Nay, my lord, I couldn't see distinctly," replied the soldier, "but she was dressed all in white, and ran very quickly along the terrace not far from this window." "Then Your Grace will perhaps be able to tell us . . ." suggested the Cardinal with utmost benevolence. "I can tell Your Eminence nothing," replied Wessex coldly. "I was in this room all the time and saw no woman near." "Your Grace was here?" said His Eminence in gentle tones of profound astonishment, "alone with Don Miguel de Suarez? . . . The woman . . ." "There was no woman here," rejoined the Duke of Wessex firmly, "and I was alone with Don Miguel de Suarez." There was dead silence now, the moon, pale, inquisitive, brilliant, peeped in through the window to see what was amiss. She saw a number of men recoiling, awestruck, from a small group composed of a dead man and of the first gentleman in the land self-confessed as a murderer. No one dared to speak, the moment was too solemn, too terrible, for any speech save a half-smothered sigh of horror. The captain of the guard was the first to recollect his duty. "Your Grace's sword . . ." he began, somewhat shamefacedly. "Ah yes! I had forgot," said Wessex quietly, as he rose to his feet. He drew his sword from its sheath, and with one quick, sudden wrench, broke the blade across his knee. Then he threw the pieces of steel on the ground. "I am ready to follow you, friend captain," he said, with all the hauteur, all the light, easy graciousness so peculiar to himself. The groups parted silently, almost respectfully, as His Grace of Wessex passed out of the room--a prisoner. PART IV HIS GRACE OF WESSEX CHAPTER XXX THOUGHTS In the loneliness and silence of the Tower, the Duke of Wessex had had enough leisure to think. One fatal autumn afternoon, and what a change in the destinies of his life! Yesterday he was the first gentleman in England, loved by many, feared by a few, reverenced by all as the perfect embodiment of national pride and national grandeur--almost a king. And to-day? But of himself, his own obvious fate, the shame and disgrace of his present position, he thought very little. Ever an easy-going philosopher, he had as yet kept the insouciance of the gamester who has staked and lost and is content to retire from the board. One thing more, remember! Life in those days was not the priceless treasure which later civilization would have us believe it. There was a greater simplicity of faith, a more childlike certitude in the great truths of futurity, which we in our epoch are so ready to cavil at. If nations and individuals committed excesses of unparalleled cruelty in the name of their respective creeds, if men hated each other, tortured each other, destroyed one another, it was because they misunderstood the teachings of religion, and not because they ignored or disbelieved them.