Lady Robert, yet had never found those rumours verified by the fact.
Some months ago, it had been reported that her ladyship was suffering
from cancer of the breast and likely soon to die of it. Yet Dr. Bayley
had reason to know that a healthier woman did not live in Berkshire.

The good doctor was a capable deductive reasoner, and the conclusion
to which he came was that if they poisoned her under cover of his
potion--she standing in no need of physic--he might afterwards be
hanged as a cover for their crime. So he refused to prescribe as he was
invited, nor troubled to make a secret of invitation and refusal.

For awhile, then, Lord Robert had prudently held his hand; moreover,
the urgency there had been a year ago, when that host of foreign suitors
laid siege to Elizabeth of England, had passed, and his lordship could
afford to wait. But now of a sudden the urgency was returned. Under the
pressure brought to bear upon her to choose a husband, Elizabeth had
half-committed herself to marry the Archduke Charles, promising the
Spanish ambassador a definite answer within a few days.

Lord Robert had felt the earth to be quaking under him; he had seen
the ruin of his high ambitions; he had watched with rage the expanding
mockery upon the countenances of Norfolk, Sussex, and those others who
hated and despised him; and he had cursed that wife of his who knew not
when to die. But for that obstinacy with which she clung to life he had
been the Queen's husband these many months, so making an end to suspense
and to the danger that lies in delay.

To-night the wantonness with which the Queen flaunted before the eyes of
all her court the predilection in which she held him, came not merely to
lull his recent doubts and fears, to feed his egregious vanity, and to
assure him that in her heart he need fear no rival; it came also to
set his soul Quiver impotent rage. He had but to put forth his hands
to possess himself of this splendid prize. Yet those hands of his were
bound while that woman lived at Cumnor. Conceive his feelings as they
stole away together like any pair of lovers.

Arm in arm they came by a stone gallery, where a stalwart scarlet
sentinel, a yeoman of the guard, with a Tudor rose embroidered in gold
upon his back, stood under a lamp set in the wall, with grounded pike
and body stiffly erect.

The tall young Queen was in crimson satin with cunningly-wrought silver
embroideries, trimmed with tufted silver fringe