"Sh! Stay you here," he enjoined. "If we are spied upon..." He left the sentence there. Already he was moving quickly, stealthily, towards the door. He paused before opening it. "Stay where you are, my lady," he enjoined again, so gravely that she could have no thought of disobeying him. "I will return at once."

He stepped out, closed the door, and crossed to the stairs. There he stopped. From his pouch he had drawn a fine length of whipcord, attached at one end to a tiny bodkin of needle sharpness. That bodkin he drove into the edge of one of the panels of the wainscot, in line with the topmost step; drawing the cord taut at a height of a foot or so above this step, he made fast its other end to the newel-post at the stair-head. He had so rehearsed the thing in his mind that the performance of it occupied but a few seconds. Such dim light of that autumn afternoon as reached the spot would leave that fine cord invisible.

Sir Richard went back to her ladyship. She had not moved in his absence, so brief as scarcely to have left her time in which to resolve upon disobeying his injunction.

"We move in secret like conspirators," said he, "and so we are easily affrighted.. I should have known it could be none but my lord himself...

here?"

"My lord!" she interrupted, coming excitedly to her feet. "Lord Robert?"

"To be sure, my lady. It was he had need to visit you in secret--for did the Queen have knowledge of his coming here, it would mean the Tower for him. You cannot think what, out of love for you, his lordship suffers.

The Queen...

"But do you say that he is here, man," her voice shrilled up in excitement.

"He is below, my lady. Such is his peril that he dared not set foot in Cumnor until he was certain beyond doubt that you are here alone."

"He is below!" she cried, and a flush dyed her pale cheeks, a light of gladness quickened her sad eyes. Already she had gathered from his cunning words a new and comforting explanation of the things reported to her. "He is below!" she repeated. "Oh!" She turned from him, and in an instant was speeding towards the door.

He stood rooted there, his nether lip between his teeth, his face a ghastly white, whilst she ran on.

"My lord! Robin! Robin!" he heard her calling, as she crossed the corridor. Then came a piercing scream that echoed through the silent house; a pause; a crashing thud below; and--silence.

Sir Richard remained by the table, immovable. Blood was trickling down his chin. He had sunk his teeth through his lip when that scream rang out. A long moment thus, as if entranced, awe-stricken. Then he braced himself, and went forward, reeling at first like a drunken man. But by the time he had reached the stairs he was master of himself again.

Swiftly, for all his trembling fingers, he unfastened the cord's end from the newel-post. The wrench upon it had already pulled the bodkin from the wainscot. He went down that abrupt spiral staircase at a moderate pace, mechanically coiling the length of whip-cord, and bestowing it with the bodkin in his pouch again, and all the while his eyes were fixed upon the grey bundle that lay so still at the stairs'

foot.

He came to it at last, and, pausing, looked more closely. He was thankful that there was not the need to touch it. The position of the brown-haired head was such as to leave no doubt of the complete success of his design. Her neck was broken. Lord Robert Dudley was free to marry the Queen.

Deliberately Sir Richard stepped over the huddled body of that poor victim of a knave's ambition, crossed the hall, and passed out, closing the door. An excellent day's work, thought he, most excellently accomplished. The servants, returning from Abingdon Fair on that Sunday evening, would find her there. They would publish the fact that in their absence her ladyship had fallen downstairs and broken her neck, and that was the end of the matter.

But that was not the end at all. Fate, the ironic interloper, had taken a hand in this evil game.

The court had moved a few days earlier to Windsor, and thither on the Friday--the 6th of September--came Alvarez de Quadra to seek the definite answer which the Queen had promised him on the subject of the Spanish marriage. What he had seen that night at Whitehall, coupled with his mistrust of her promises and experience of her fickleness, had rendered him uneasy. Either she was trifling with him, or else she was behaving in a manner utterly unbecoming the future wife of the Archduke.

In either case some explanation was necessary. De Quadra must know where he stood. Having failed to obtain an audience before the court left London, he had followed it to Windsor, cursing all women and contemplating the advantages of the Salic law.

He found at Windsor an atmosphere of constraint, and it was not until the morrow that he obtained an audience with the Queen. Even then this was due to chance rather than to design on the part of Elizabeth. For they met on the terrace as she was returning from hunting. She dismissed those about her, including the stalwart Robert Dudley, and, alone with de Quadra, invited him to speak.

"Madame," he said, "I am writing to my master, and I desire to know whether your Majesty would wish me to add anything to what you have announced already as your intention regarding the Archduke."

She knit her brows. The wily Spaniard fenced so closely that there was no alternative but to come to grips.

"Why, sir," she answered dryly, "you may tell his Majesty that I have come to an absolute decision, which is that I will not marry the Archduke."

The colour mounted to the Spaniard's sallow cheeks. Iron self-control alone saved him from uttering unpardonable words. Even so he spoke sternly:

"This, madame, is not what you had led me to believe when last we talked upon the subject."

At another time Elizabeth might have turned upon him and rent him for that speech. But it happened that she was in high good-humour that afternoon, and disposed to indulgence. She laughed, surveying herself in the small steel mirror that dangled from her waist.

"You are ungallant to remind me, my lord," said she. "My sex, you may have heard, is privileged to change of mind."

"Then, madame, I pray that you may change it yet again." His tone was bitter.

"Your prayer will not be heard. This time I am resolved."

De Quadra bowed. "The King, my master, will not be pleased, I fear."

She looked him straightly in the face, her dark eyes kindling.

"God's death!" said she, "I marry to please myself, and not the King your master."

"You are resolved on marriage then?" flashed he.

"And it please you," she mocked him archly, her mood of joyousness already conquering her momentary indignation.

"What pleases you must please me also, madame," he answered, in a tone so cold that it belied his words. "That it please you, is reason enough why you should marry... Whom did your Majesty say?"

"Nay. I named no names. Yet one so astute might hazard a shrewd guess."

Half-challenging, half-coy, she eyed him over her fan.

"A guess? Nay, madame. I might affront your Majesty."

"How so?"

"If I were deluded by appearances. If I named a subject who signally enjoys your royal favour."

"You mean Lord Robert Dudley." She paled a little, and her bosom's heave was quickened. "Why should the guess affront me?"

"Because a queen--a wise queen, madame--does not mate with a subject--particularly with one who has a wife already."

He had stung her. He had wounded at once the pride of the woman and the dignity of the queen, yet in a way that made it difficult for her to take direct offense. She bit her lip and mastered her surge of anger.

Then she laughed, a thought sneeringly.

"Why, as to my Lord Robert's wife, it seems you are less well-informed than usual, sir. Lady Robert Dudley is dead, or very nearly so."

And as blank amazement overspread his face, she passed upon her way and left him.

But anon, considering, she grew vaguely uneasy, and that very night expressed her afflicting doubt to my lord, reporting to him de Quadra's words. His lordship, who was mentally near-sighted, laughed.

"He'll change his tone before long," said he.

She set her hands upon his shoulders, and looked up adoringly into his handsome gipsy face. Never had he known her so fond as in these last days since her surrender to him that night upon the terrace at Whitehall, never had she been more the woman and less the queen in her bearing towards him.

"You are sure, Robin? You are quite sure?" she pleaded.