o
her heart and leaned against the door frame.

After a short silence she said: "Edwin Caskoden--fool! Why could you
not have told me that at first? I thought my brain would burn and my
heart burst."

"I should have told you had you given me time. As to the pain it gave
you"--this was the last charge of my large magazine of indignation--"I
care very little about that. You deserve it. I do not know what
explanation you have to offer, but nothing can excuse you. An
explanation, however good, would have been little comfort to you had
Brandon failed you in Billingsgate that night."

She had fallen into a chair by this time and sat in reverie, staring
at nothing. Then the tears came again, but more softly.

"You are right; nothing can excuse me. I am the most selfish,
ungrateful, guilty creature ever born. A whole month in that dungeon!"
And she covered her drooping face with her hands.

"Go away for awhile, Edwin, and then return; we shall want to see you
again," said Jane.

Upon my return Mary was more composed. Jane had dressed her hair, and
she was sitting on the bed in her riding habit, hat in hand. Her
fingers were nervously toying at the ribbons and her eyes cast down.

"You are surely right, Sir Edwin. I have no excuse. I can have none;
but I will tell you how it was. You remember the day you left me in
the waiting-room of the king's council?--when they were discussing my
marriage without one thought of me, as if I were but a slave or a dumb
brute that could not feel." She began to weep a little, but soon
recovered herself. "While waiting for you to return, the Duke of
Buckingham came in. I knew Henry was trying to sell me to the French
king, and my heart was full of trouble--from more causes than you can
know. All the council, especially that butcher's son, were urging him
on, and Henry himself was anxious that the marriage should be brought
about. He thought it would strengthen him for the imperial crown. He
wants everything, and is ambitious to be emperor. Emperor! He would
cut a pretty figure! I hoped, though, I should be able to induce him
not to sacrifice me to his selfish interests, as I have done before,
but I knew only too well it would tax my powers to the utmost this
time. I knew that if I did anything to anger or to antagonize him, it
would be all at an end with me. You know he is so exacting with other
people's conduct, for one who is so careless of his own--so virtuous
by proxy. You remember ho