He sighed and returned to his former place beside the table, like a man who has done all that duty demanded of him, and now is weary and ready to let destiny take its course. Ursula watched him dully, stupidly; she could not read just then what went on behind that mask of suave benevolence. Could she have read the Cardinal's innermost thoughts she would have seen that complete satisfaction filled his ambitious heart. He knew that he had succeeded, it was but a question of time . . . a few minutes, perhaps; but he had a good quarter of an hour to spare, in which the tortured soul before him would fight its last fight with despair. There was the long arraignment to be read out by the Clerk of the Crown, then the names of the triers to be called out in their order--all that, before the prisoner was actually called to the bar. Oh yes! he had plenty of time, now that he was sure of victory. The girl wandered mechanically towards the door, her trembling hand sought the latch, but was too weak to turn it. She glued her ear to the lock and perchance heard a word or two, for even the Cardinal caught the sound of a loud voice reading the deadly indictment. "The prisoner hath confessed . . . "This most heinous crime . . . "For which sentence of death . . . "Return his precept and bring forth the prisoner." Ursula straightened out her girlish figure; with a firm hand now she smoothed her veil over her hair, and rearranged the disordered folds of her kerchief. She crossed the room with an unfaltering step, and once more took a seat on the low stool opposite to His Eminence the Cardinal. She seemed to have reassumed the same icy calm which she had worn earlier in the interview; she was quite pale again, and all traces of tears had disappeared from her eyes. Quite instinctively, certainly against his will, the Cardinal failed to return the steady gaze which she now fixed upon him. As she sat there close to him, her great lustrous eyes trying to search his very soul, he knew that at last she had guessed. She _knew_ that he was fully aware of the fact that she was not the woman for whose sake the Duke of Wessex was suffering condemnation at this very moment. All the meshes of the base intrigue which had landed the man she loved in a felon's dock escaped her utterly, but this much she realized, that the Cardinal had worked for the Duke's undoing, that he knew who her rival was, that he was wilfully shielding that woman, whilst callously sacrificing her--Ursula Glynde--to the success of some further scheme.