would right fain come to you, if that might be."

"Then it may be, dear heart!" said Isoult, much moved by her urgency.
"I would fainer have you than any which I do know, unless it were Annis
Holland, that I have known from the cradle. But should it like you to
follow me into Devon? for we do look to return thither when the troubles
are past."

"I will follow you any whither," answered she. "I care nothing where I
am, only this,--that I would liefer be out of London than in it."

So Esther came, and took up her quarters at the sign of the Lamb. Every
house in London had then its sign, which served the purpose of a number.

Meanwhile the clouds gathered more darkly over the only man in power
(excepting the boy-King himself), who really cared more for the welfare
of England than for his own personal aggrandisement. And it was not
England which forsook and destroyed Somerset. It was the so-called
Lutheran faction, to the majority of whom Lutheranism was only the cloak
which hid their selfish political intrigues. There had been a time when
Somerset was one of them, and had sought his own advancement as they now
did theirs. And the deserted regiment never pardons the deserter. The
faction complained that Somerset was proud and self-willed: he worked
alone; he acted on his own responsibility; he did not consult his
friends. This of course meant in the case of each member of the faction
(as such complaints usually do), "He did not consult _me_." Somerset
might truthfully have pleaded in reply that he had not a friend to
consult. The Court held no friend to him; and, worst of all, his own
home held none. He had, unquestionably, a number of acquaintances, of
that class which has been well and wittily defined as consisting of
"intimate enemies;" and he had a wife, who loved dearly the high title
he had given her, and the splendid fortune with which she kept it up.
But neither she nor any one else loved _him_--except One, who was
sitting above the Water-floods, watching His tried child's life, and
ready, when his extremity should have come, to whisper to that weary and
sorrowful heart, "Come and rest with Me."

But that time was not yet. The battle must be fought before the rest
could come.

On Friday, the 5th of October, a private gathering of nineteen of the
Council was held at Lord Warwick's house in Holborn--that Lord Warwick
of whom I have already spoken as John Dudley, the half-brother of Lady
Frances Monk