-night by every glance of her blue eyes, by the
pressure of that fair hand upon his arm, by the languishing abandonment
with which that warm young body swayed towards him, as they passed out
from the blaze of lights and the strains of music into the gloom and
silence of the gallery leading to the terrace.

"Out--let us go out, Robin. Let me have air," she almost panted, as she
drew him on.

Assuredly he would be master soon. Indeed, he might have been master
already but for that wife of his, that stumbling-block to his ambition,
who practiced the housewifely virtues at Cumnor Place, and clung so
tenaciously and so inconsiderately to life in spite of all his plans to
relieve her of the burden of it.

For a year and more his name had been coupled with the Queen's in a
tale that hurt her honour as a woman and imperilled her dignity as a
sovereign. Already in October of 1559 Alvarez de Quadra, the Spanish
ambassador, had written home: "I have learnt certain things as to the
terms on which the Queen and Lord Robert stand towards each other which
I could not have believed."

That was at a time when de Quadra was one of a dozen ambassadors who
were competing for her hand, and Lord Robert had, himself, appeared to
be an ally of de Quadra and an advocate of the Spanish marriage with the
Archduke Charles. But it was a presence which nowise deceived the astute
Spaniard, who employed a legion of spies to keep him well informed.

"All the dallying with us," he wrote, "all the dallying with the Swede,
all the dallying there will be with the rest, one after another, is
merely to keep Lord Robert's enemies in play until his villainy about
his wife can be executed."

What that particular villainy was, the ambassador had already stated
earlier in his letter. "I have learnt from a person who usually gives me
true information that Lord Robert has sent to have his wife poisoned."

What had actually happened was that Sir Richard Verney--a trusted
retainer of Lord Robert's--had reported to Dr. Bayley, of New College,
Oxford, that Lady Robert Dudley was "sad and ailing," and had asked him
for a potion. But the doctor was learned in more matters than physic. He
had caught an echo of the tale of Lord Robert's ambition; he had heard
a whisper that whatever suitors might come from overseas for Elizabeth,
she would marry none but "my lord"--as Lord Robert was now commonly
styled. More, he had aforetime heard rumours of the indispositions of