Wessex and Everingham had readjusted their masks and wrapped their cloaks around them, ere they once more mingled with the crowd which still thronged around the gaily decked booths.
The evening now was rapidly drawing in. Hampton Court, in the fast-gathering haze beyond, looked grey and ghostlike, with brightly illumined windows beginning to gleam here and there.
With an impatient frown, Wessex deliberately turned his back on the gorgeous pile: it represented boredom to him, politics and dullness, and he loved gaiety, sunshine, and laughter, these merry-makers here, the pretty country wenches with their bare arms and neat ankles showing beneath their brightly coloured robes.
Everingham was silent as he followed his friend through the crowd. But Wessex' laugh was always infectious, and he seemed in a merry mood to-night. Harry Plantagenet alone seemed morose; he disapproved of all these country louts, who were over free with their caresses. He kept close to his master's heel, and only gave an occasional growl, when some impudent 'prentice dared to come too nigh.
"Well, Harry, old friend," said the Duke after a while, "shall we go and consult the witch, or wait until the stars are out? Friend Everingham here is none too good company to-night, eh? In thine ear, proud Plantagenet, he hath designs on our freedom. But the soothsayer shall cast our horoscope, and look into our future, see if you are to become chief lapdog to the Queen of England, or if we are both of us to fall in bondage to the mistress plighted to us by an uncomfortable old gentleman, who had not consulted us in the matter. 'Sdeath man," he added, suddenly looking straight into Everingham's serious face, "why do you look so grave? Tell me, pending that witch's starlit lies, what's your best news?"
"By my faith!" responded Everingham simply, "the best news is Your Grace's return. 'Twas an ill wind that wafted you away from Court."
"Aye! 'twas the wind of infinite boredom wafted my Grace away," replied the Duke with a smile. "Confess, friend, that the Court cannot be alluring with the Queen telling her beads, the foreign ambassadors ruling England, the Privy Council at loggerheads, the people grumbling, and the ladies yawning. Brrr!"
He gave a mock shiver, and seemed not to notice the quick look of reproach cast at him by his friend.
"And out of sheer boredom," quoth Everingham with a sigh of deep disappointment, "you piqued the Queen of England."
Wessex did not reply at once. At Everingham's tone of rebuke a slight frown had contracted his forehead, and that certain look of hauteur, never wholly absent from his face, at once became more apparent.
There was more than mere camaraderie between these two men: unity of thought, similarity of tastes and education, a great and overwhelming love for their own country, together with mutual understanding and appreciation, had long ago knit the ties of friendship closely between them. It was generally admitted by every one that Lord Everingham might venture on a ground of familiarity with His Grace which no one else quite dared to tread.
This time too, after that instant's hesitation, the reserve which every now and then seemed entirely to detach the Duke of Wessex from his surroundings, quickly disappeared again. The pleasant smile returned to the proud lips, he shrugged his shoulders and said simply—
"Is the Queen of England piqued?"
"Can you ask?" rejoined the other with increased vehemence.
Then he checked himself abruptly, feeling no doubt how useless it was to discuss such matters seriously just now.
"The only woman," he added, falling in once more with his friend's lighter mood, "the only woman whose blandishments His Grace of Wessex has ever been known to resist."
"And that with difficulty," concluded the Duke gaily. "But you see, friend," he added with mock gravity, "with a Tudor you never can tell; you might lose your heart one day and your head the next."
"Mary Tudor loves you too well . . ." protested Lord Everingham.
"She is the daughter of King Harry VIII, remember, and would threaten me with the block or the rack at every indiscretion."
He paused, then added quaintly—
"And I would commit so many."
"A woman who loves always forgives," urged his friend.
"A woman, my good Everingham, will forgive a grave infidelity—perhaps! but not a number of little indiscretions. Mine," he added with a light sigh, "would be the little indiscretions."
"And while you fled from Court the Queen of England has almost promised to wed the Spanish king," said Everingham bitterly.
He watched his friend keenly as he spoke and paused a moment before he added pointedly—
"'Twill be a proud day for the peers of England when they bow the knee to their Liege Lord, a foreign king."
Wessex shrugged his broad shoulders and turned to where a pretty wench, dispensing ale to a scarlet-cloaked burgher, formed a picture pleasing to his artistic eye.
Everingham, somewhat proud of his own diplomatic skill, had noted, however, a certain stiffening of His Grace's figure at the vision which had been conjured before him.
That of a Wessex bending the knee before a Spaniard.
"You were away," continued Everingham, eager to goad his friend into speech, "and my Lord Cardinal and Don Miguel know how to blow upon the flames of Mary's jealousy. Your influence can still save England, my lord," he added with great earnestness, "let not your enemies say that fear of a woman keeps you from exerting it."
"H'm! do they say that?" mused Wessex quaintly, whilst a smile, which almost might be called boyish, altered the whole expression of his serious face. "By my faith! but they are right. One's enemies usually are."
He drew his friend away from the immediate vicinity of a jabbering crowd, into a dark corner formed by one of the booths. Everingham, thinking that at last he had led Wessex into a graver train of thought, failed to notice the humorous twinkle of the eyes which had so palpably struggled to the surface.
"It is the fear of a woman has kept me away from Court," he whispered solemnly, "but that woman is not the Queen of England."
"Who is it then?"
"In your ear, friend . . . 'tis the Lady Ursula Glynde."
Everingham could scarce suppress a movement of intense satisfaction. Lady Ursula! beautiful, exquisite Lady Ursula was the one stumbling-block on which the schemes of his faction might become hopelessly shattered.
Wessex was nominally plighted to the lady. True, 'twas an engagement undertaken by the lady's own father, without the consent of the parties chiefly concerned. But in Tudor England there was a curious adherence to such solemnly plighted troths, which might have proved a bar to the Duke's sense of absolute freedom.
If, however, he looked upon this unnatural and monstrous pledge with the lightness which it fully deserved, if he considered himself at liberty to break the imaginary bonds which held him to Lady Ursula, then the work of his partisans would become comparatively easy.
They had always hoped and fully intended to overcome His Grace's scruples in the matter, and fondly thought that they would succeed. But since the Duke himself looked indifferently upon this so-called troth, why, Everingham himself was the first to feel the keenest satisfaction at the thought.
"You dislike the lady then?" he asked with unfeigned delight.
"I have never seen her," retorted Wessex placidly. "At any rate, not since she was in her cradle. I certainly didn't like her then."
"She is very beautiful," remarked Everingham, with a somewhat shamefaced recollection of his previous adventure, "but——"
"She might be a veritable angel, yet she would frighten me."
A mock shudder passed through his tall, athletic frame, and taking his friend's arm in his, he whispered confidentially, "Think of it, my lord! A woman whom duty compels one to love—Brrr!—Her own father plighted our troth; I am left comparatively free, yet if I do not wed Lady Ursula, she is doomed to end her days in a convent. . . . A matter of honour—what? . . . Yet I—I, who could love any woman," he added emphatically, "be she queen or peasant—that is—h'm!—if I were really put to it—find the very thought of my promised bride abhorrent. She is the one woman in all the world whom I could never love—never! . . . I know it! So I ran away from Court, not because I feared one woman loved me too much, but because I knew I should love one woman too little."
He had spoken so light-heartedly, so gaily, that in spite of the grave issues at stake Everingham could not help but laugh.
"Nay! perhaps you exaggerate the danger," he said. "The Lady Ursula might prefer the convent to being a duchess. She has never seen Your Grace, she is rich and high-born, she may be pious——"
"Or perverse," responded Wessex. "I've never met a woman yet who didn't want—badly—the thing she mightn't get."
"Is England then a woman," queried Everingham with renewed earnestness, "since she wants Wessex?"
But the Duke was not prepared to follow his friend to-night into sentimental, ultra-patriotic bypaths. He was not altogether inclined to sacrifice his liberty for the sake of ousting the Spanish king from his proposed English throne.
Nevertheless he rejoined more gravely than was his wont.
"Does England really want me?" he said with gentle irony. "Nay!" he added, restraining with one hand Everingham's exuberant protests, "I know! I know! you all think so, and that I am an unhallowed idler, letting my country drift into the arms of the foreigner. Do not deny it, friend. . . . Perhaps I am. . . . Nay! we'll say, indeed I am. . . . There! there! calm your fears. Have I not told you that Her Majesty hath commanded my presence at Court? We'll set our poor wits to oust Spanish diplomacy, and I must trust my luckiest star to inspire in the Lady Ursula a wholesome desire for the convent; for I tell thee, friend, that if she holds me to my silken bonds, I will at once repair to the outermost corner of the earth and thence drop into vacancy, or take flight to the blue dome of heaven above."
"God protect Your Grace," rejoined Everingham with grave solemnity. "Ah! I fear no Spanish influence now," he added enthusiastically. "You'll save England, my lord, and the gratitude of the nation will be at your feet."
Wessex smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and without further allusion to more serious subjects the two men mingled once more among the crowd.