omforting explanation of the things reported to
her. "He is below!" she repeated. "Oh!" She turned from him, and in an
instant was speeding towards the door.

He stood rooted there, his nether lip between his teeth, his face a
ghastly white, whilst she ran on.

"My lord! Robin! Robin!" he heard her calling, as she crossed the
corridor. Then came a piercing scream that echoed through the silent
house; a pause; a crashing thud below; and--silence.

Sir Richard remained by the table, immovable. Blood was trickling down
his chin. He had sunk his teeth through his lip when that scream rang
out. A long moment thus, as if entranced, awe-stricken. Then he braced
himself, and went forward, reeling at first like a drunken man. But
by the time he had reached the stairs he was master of himself again.
Swiftly, for all his trembling fingers, he unfastened the cord's end
from the newel-post. The wrench upon it had already pulled the bodkin
from the wainscot. He went down that abrupt spiral staircase at a
moderate pace, mechanically coiling the length of whip-cord, and
bestowing it with the bodkin in his pouch again, and all the while his
eyes were fixed upon the grey bundle that lay so still at the stairs'
foot.

He came to it at last, and, pausing, looked more closely. He was
thankful that there was not the need to touch it. The position of the
brown-haired head was such as to leave no doubt of the complete success
of his design. Her neck was broken. Lord Robert Dudley was free to marry
the Queen.

Deliberately Sir Richard stepped over the huddled body of that poor
victim of a knave's ambition, crossed the hall, and passed out,
closing the door. An excellent day's work, thought he, most excellently
accomplished. The servants, returning from Abingdon Fair on that Sunday
evening, would find her there. They would publish the fact that in their
absence her ladyship had fallen downstairs and broken her neck, and that
was the end of the matter.

* * * * *

But that was not the end at all. Fate, the ironic interloper, had taken
a hand in this evil game.

The court had moved a few days earlier to Windsor, and thither on
the Friday--the 6th of September--came Alvarez de Quadra to seek the
definite answer which the Queen had promised him on the subject of the
Spanish marriage. What he had seen that night at Whitehall, coupled
with his mistrust of her promises and experience of her fickleness, had
render