rumour had been busy ever since; it was whispered far and wide that the King loathed his wife, and complained that he had been deceived as to her charms; and Ralph, who was more behind the scenes than most men, knew that the rumour was only too true.  He had been present at an abominable incident the day after the marriage had taken place, when the King had stormed and raved about the council-room, crying out that he had been deceived, and adding many gross details for the benefit of his friends.

Cromwell had been strangely moody ever since.  Ralph had watched his heavy face day after day staring vacantly across the room, and his hand that held the pen dig and prick at the paper beneath it.

Even that was not all.  The Anglo-German alliance had provoked opposition on the continent instead of quelling it; and Ralph saw more than one threatening piece of news from abroad that hinted at a probable invasion of England should Cromwell’s schemes take effect.  These too, however, had proved deceptive, and the Lutheran princes whom he had desired to conciliate were even already beginning to draw back from the consequences of their action.

Ralph was in Cromwell’s room one day towards the end of January, when a courier arrived with despatches from an agent who had been following the Spanish Emperor’s pacific progress through France, undertaken as a kind of demonstration against England.

Cromwell tore open the papers, and glanced at them, running his quick attentive eye over this page and that; and Ralph saw his face grow stern and white.  He tossed the papers on to the table, and nodded to the courier to leave the room.

Then he took up a pen, examined it; dashed it point down against the table; gnawed his nails a moment, and then caught Ralph’s eye.

“We are failing,” he said abruptly.  “Mr. Torridon, if you are a rat you had better run.”

“I shall not run, sir,” said Ralph.

“God’s Body!” said his master, “we shall all run together, I think;—­but not yet.”

Then he took up the papers again, and began to read.

It was a few days later that Ralph received the news of his mother’s illness.

She had written to him occasionally, telling him of his father’s tiresome ways, his brother’s arrogance, his sister’s feeble piety, and finally she had told him of Beatrice’s arrival.

“I consented very gladly,” she had written, “for I thought to teach my lady a lesson or two; but I find her very pert and obstinate.  I do not understand, my dear son, how you could have wished to make her your wife; and yet I will grant that she has a taking way with her; she seems to fear nothing but her own superstitions and folly, but I am very happy to think that all is over between you.  She never loved you, my Ralph; for she cares nothing when I speak your name, as I have done two or three times; nor yet Master More either.  I think she has no heart.”