-the victim of
a physical passion that took no account of the worthlessness underlying
his splendid exterior--reaching out a hand to raise him to a throne.
Being what he was, he weighed his young wife's life at naught in the
evil scales of his ambition. And yet he had loved her once, more truly
perhaps than he could now pretend to love the Queen.

It was some ten years since, as a lad of eighteen, he had taken Sir
John Robsart's nineteen-year-old daughter to wife. She had brought him
considerable wealth and still more devotion. Because of this devotion
she was content to spend her days at Cumnor, whilst he ruffled it at
court; content to take such crumbs of attention as he could spare her
upon occasion. And during the past year, whilst he had been plotting her
death, she had been diligently caring for his interests and fostering
the prosperity of the Berkshire estate. If he thought of this at all, he
allowed no weakly sentiment to turn him from his purpose. There was too
much at stake for that--a throne, no less.

And so, on the morning after that half-surrender of Elizabeth's, we
find my lord closeted with his henchman, Sir Richard Verney. Sir
Richard--like his master--was a greedy, unscrupulous, ambitious
scoundrel, prepared to go to any lengths for the sake of such worldly
advancement as it lay in my lord's power to give him. My lord perforce
used perfect frankness with this perfect servant.

"Thou'lt rise or fall with me, Dick," quoth he. "Help me up, then, and
so mount with me. When I am King, as soon now I shall be, look to me.
Now to the thing that is to do. Thou'lt have guessed it."

To Sir Richard it was an easy guess, considering how much already he had
been about this business. He signified as much.

My lord shifted in his elbow-chair, and drew his embroidered bedgown of
yellow satin closer about his shapely limbs.

"Hast failed me twice before, Richard," said he. "God's death, man, fail
me not again, or the last chance may go the way of the others. There's a
magic in the number three. See that I profit by it, or I am undone, and
thou with me."

"I'd not have failed before, but for that suspicious dotard Bayley,"
grumbled Verney. "Your lordship bade me see that all was covered."

"Aye, aye. And I bid thee so again. On thy life, leave no footprints
by which we may be tracked. Bayley is not the only physician in Oxford.
About it, then, and swiftly. Time is the very soul of fortune in this
business, wit