"Women say that there is no worse folly than to listen to His Grace of Wessex." "Do you think they are right?" "How can I tell?" "By listening to me for half an hour." "Here, in this garden?" "No! . . . there! . . . by the river. . . ." And he pointed beyond the enclosure of the garden, there where the soft evening breeze gently stirred the rushes in the stream. "Oh! . . . what would everybody say?" she exclaimed in mock alarm. "Nothing! envy of my good fortune would make them dumb." "But the Queen will be asking for you, and the Duchess of Lincoln wondering where I am." "They shall not find us . . . for we'll pull the boat beyond the reeds . . . just you and I alone . . . with the gloaming all round us . . . and the twitter of the birds when they go to rest. Shall we go? . . ." Her heart had already consented. His voice was low and persuasive, a strange earnestness seemed to vibrate through it, as he begged her to come with him. Slowly she began to walk by his side towards the stream. She seemed scarcely alive now, a being from another world wandering in the land of dreams. He said nothing more, for the world was too beautiful for speech. Youth, love, delight were coursing through his veins, and as he led the young girl towards the bank it seemed to him as if he were taking her away from this dull world of prose and humanity, far, far away through mysterious golden gates beyond the sunset, to a land where she would reign as queen. The river beckoned to them, and the soft, misty horizon seemed to call. The intoxicating odour of summer's dying roses filled the air, whilst in the distance across the stream a nightingale began to sing. CHAPTER XVI THE ULTIMATUM The envoy of His Holiness had departed. Mary Tudor had dismissed her ladies, for she wished to speak with the Cardinal de Moreno alone. Throughout the audience with the papal Nuncio, His Eminence had already seen the storm-clouds gathering thick and fast on the Queen's brow. His Grace of Wessex, gone to fetch a breviary left accidentally on the terrace-coping, had been gone half an hour, and moreover had not yet returned. Her Majesty had sent a page to request His Grace's presence. The page returned with the intimation that His Grace could not be found. Someone had spied him in the distance walking towards the river, in company with a lady dressed in white. Then the storm-clouds had burst. The Queen peremptorily ordered every one out of the room, then she turned with real Tudor-like fury upon His Eminence. "My lord Cardinal," she said in a quivering voice, which she did not even try to steady, "an you had your master's wishes at heart, you have indeed gone the wrong way to work." The Cardinal's keen grey eyes had watched Mary's growing wrath with much amusement. What was a woman's wrath to him? Nothing but an asset, an additional advantage in the political game which he was playing.