Not a queen now, not a proud and wilful Tudor, passionate, cruel, or capricious, but only a middle-aged, broken-hearted woman, with eyes swollen with weeping, and brain heavy with eternally reiterated desires. To save him! to save him! But how? That he had committed so foul a crime as to stab an enemy in the back, this in the very face of his own confession Mary still obstinately refused to believe. The rumours anent the presence of a woman in that part of the Palace and at that fatal hour had of course reached her ears. Jealousy and hatred, which had raged within her, had readily fastened on Ursula Glynde as the cause, if not the actual perpetrator of the dastardly crime. That a woman was somehow or other connected with the terrible events of that night, every one was of course ready to admit, but in what manner no one was able to conjecture. A murder had been committed. Of that there could be no doubt. Don Miguel de Suarez had been stabbed in the back! Not in fair fight, but brutally, callously stabbed! and he a guest at the English Court! Of this barbarous, abominable act the Duke of Wessex stood self-convicted. Impossible, of course! Preposterous! pronounced his friends. He! the first gentleman in England, brave to a fault, fastidious, artistic, and a perfect swordsman to boot! The very accusation was ridiculous. Yet he stood self-convicted. Why? in the name of Heaven! Why? "To shield a woman," said His Grace's friends. "What woman?" retorted his enemies. The name of Lady Ursula Glynde had been faintly whispered, yet it seemed almost as preposterous to suppose that a beautiful young girl--refined, gentle, poetic, scarce out of her teens--would have the physical strength to commit so foul a deed, as to think of His Grace in connection with it. Yet, in spite of that, the idea had gained ground, that the Lady Ursula Glynde could, an she would, throw some light on the mystery which surrounded the events of that terrible night, and no one brooded over that idea more determinedly than did Mary Tudor. The young girl had of course denied all knowledge of what had or had not occurred. There was not a single definite fact that might even remotely connect her with the supposed enmity between Wessex and Don Miguel. The Cardinal was not likely to speak, for the present turn of events suited his own plans to perfection. My lord of Everingham was away in Scotland, and news travelled slowly these days. As for the Queen, she had nothing on which to found her suspicions, save her own hatred of the girl and the firm conviction that on that same night, an hour or two before the murder, Ursula and Wessex had met. She had then seen and upbraided the girl in the presence of my lord Cardinal and the ladies; His Grace was not there then, but what happened immediately afterwards?