nd in a moment
was kneeling at her aunt's side, her face buried in her lap, and felt
those kindly old hands passing over her hair. She heard a murmur over
her head, but scarcely caught a word. There was but one thing she
needed, and that--

Then she knelt suddenly upright listening, and the caressing hand was
still.

"Beatrice, my dear, Beatrice."

* * * * *

There were footsteps on the stairs outside, eager and urgent. The girl
rose to her feet, and stood there, swaying a little with a restrained
expectation.

Then the door was open, and Chris was there, flushed and radiant, with
the level evening light full on his face.

"It is all well," he cried, "my Lord will take us to the King."

CHAPTER X

PLACENTIA

The river-front of Greenwich House was a magnificent sight as the four
men came up to it one morning nearly three weeks later. The long
two-storied row of brick buildings which Henry had named Placentia, with
their lines of windows broken by the two clusters of slender towers, and
porticos beneath, were fronted by broad platforms and a strip of turf
with steps leading down to the water, and at each of these entrances
there continually moved brilliant figures, sentries with the sunlight
flashing on their steel caps and pike-points, servants in the royal
livery, watermen in their blue and badges.

Here and there at the foot of the steps rocked gaudy barges, a mass of
gilding and colour, with broad low canopies at the stern, and flags
drooping at the prow; wherries moved to and fro, like water-beetles,
shooting across from bank to bank with passengers, above and below the
palace, or pausing with uplifted oars as the stream swept them down, for
the visitors to stare and marvel at the great buildings. Behind rose up
the green masses of trees against the sloping park. And over all lay the
July sky, solemn flakes of cloud drifting across a field of intense
blue.

There had been a delay in the fulfilment of the Archbishop's promise; at
one time he himself was away in the country on affairs, at another time
the King was too much pressed, Cranmer reported, to have such a matter
brought before him; and then suddenly a messenger had come across from
Lambeth with a letter, bidding them present themselves at Greenwich on
the following morning; for the day following that had been fixed for
Cromwell's execution, and the Archbishop hoped that the King would be
ready to hear a wo