."

"You mean?"

"That if your motive prove to be such as de Quadra and others allege,
they will be in danger of believing."

"Be plain, man, in God's name. What exactly is alleged?"

He obeyed her very fully.

"That my lord contrived the killing of his wife so that he might have
liberty to marry your Majesty, and that your Majesty was privy to the
deed." He spoke out boldly, and hurried on before she could let loose
her wrath. "It is still in your power, madame, to save your honour,
which is now in peril. But there is only one way in which you can
accomplish it. If you put from you all thought of marrying Lord Robert,
England will believe that de Quadra and those others lied. If you
persist and carry out your intention, you proclaim the truth of his
report; and you see what must inevitably follow."

She saw indeed, and, seeing, was afraid.

Within a few hours of that interview she delivered her answer to Cecil,
which was that she had no intention of marrying Dudley.

Because of her fear she saved her honour by sacrificing her heart, by
renouncing marriage with the only man she could have taken for her mate
of all who had wooed her. Yet the wound of that renunciation was slow to
heal. She trifled with the notion of other marriages, but ever and anon,
in her despair, perhaps, we see her turning longing eyes towards the
handsome Lord Robert, later made Earl of Leicester. Once, indeed, some
six years after Amy's death, there was again some talk of her marrying
him, which was quickly quelled by a reopening of the question of how Amy
died. Between these two, between the fulfilment of her desire and his
ambition, stood the irreconcilable ghost of his poor murdered wife.

Perhaps it was some thought of this that found expression in her
passionate outburst when she learnt of the birth of Mary Stuart's child:
"The Queen of Scots is lighter of a fair son; and I am but a barren
stock."

VII. SIR JUDAS

The Betrayal of Sir Walter Ralegh

Sir Walter was met on landing at Plymouth from his ill-starred voyage to
El Dorado by Sir Lewis Stukeley, which was but natural, seeing that Sir
Lewis was not only Vice-Admiral of Devon, but also Sir Walter's very
good friend and kinsman.

If Sir Walter doubted whether it was in his quality as kinsman or as
Vice-Admiral that Sir Lewis met him, the cordiality of the latter's
embrace and the noble entertainment following at the house of Sir
Christopher Hare, near the port