“Again I say I do not blame you,” I returned, “though I wish sincerely you had not gone.”

“Why did you follow me, and how did you know where I had gone?” asked Frances.

I told her of my visit to her father’s house and how, upon my failure to find her there, I went to the Old Swan.

“I thought it would be better that you should leave the Old Swan with me than alone,” I said.  “It would have been better had you taken me with you.”

“Would you have gone with me, knowing my errand?” she asked.

“Yes, gladly,” I answered.  “When a woman deliberately makes up her mind to do a thing of this sort, she does it sooner or later, despite heaven, earth, or the other place to the contrary.  I should have gained nothing by opposing you; I could at least have given color of propriety by going with you.”

We walked up Thames Street till we came to the neighborhood of Baynard’s Castle, where we took boat and went to Whitehall, each of us in silent revery all the way.

While I was paying the waterman, Frances ran up the stairs to the garden, and when I followed I saw her talking to the king, so I stopped ten or twelve paces from them and removed my hat.  Being in their lee, the wind brought the king’s words to me, and I imagined, from the loud tone in which he spoke, that he intended me to hear what he had to say.  Perhaps he suspected that I had helped Frances in her morning’s escapade.

“I am greatly disappointed, my angel, my beauty,” said the king, “that you have taken this morning’s excursion.”

So he knew of her “excursion,” and doubtless had instigated the visit of the sheriffs to the Old Swan.

“What has your angel done this morning to displease her king?” asked Frances, with a laugh so merry that one might well have supposed it genuine.

“What has she done this morning?” repeated the king.  “She has been to visit the man who seeks the king’s life.  That is what she has done.”

He had hit the nail squarely on the head at the first stroke, but whether his accuracy was a mere guess, or the result of knowledge, I did not know.  I trembled, awaiting the outcome of my cousin’s conference.

At first Frances appeared to be horror-stricken, and her surprise seemed to know no bounds, but after a moment of splendid acting, her manner changed to one of righteous indignation, touched with grief, because the king had so wrongfully accused her.

“Your Majesty horrifies me!” she exclaimed, stepping back from the king.  “Is there a man in all England who would seek his king’s life?”

“There is,” returned his Majesty.  “And you have been to visit him.”

Frances denied nothing.  She was simply stunned by grief and benumbed by a sense of outrage put upon her by the king.  So after a moment of inimitable pantomime, she answered, speaking softly:—­

“I fear a gentle madness has touched your Majesty’s brain, else you would not so cruelly accuse me.  You have so many weighty affairs to trouble you and to prey on your mind that it is no wonder—­”