“Ah! sit down, Nick,” said the monk.  “The drunken fool is away again.”

And they heard the steps reel on towards Westminster.

* * * * *

It was not until a fortnight later that they went at last to Lambeth.

Sir James had been hard to persuade; but Beatrice had succeeded at last.  Nicholas had professed himself ready to ask a favour of the devil himself under the circumstances; and Chris himself continued to support the lawyer’s opinion.  He repeated his arguments again and again.

Then it was necessary to make an appointment with the Archbishop; and a day was fixed at last.  My Lord would see them, wrote a secretary, at two o’clock on the afternoon of July the third.

Beatrice sat through that long hot afternoon in the window-seat of the upstairs parlour, looking out over the wide river below, conscious perhaps for the first time of the vast weight of responsibility that rested on her.

She had seen them go off in a wherry, the father and son with Nicholas in the stern, and the lawyer facing them on the cross-bench; they had been terribly silent as they walked down to the stairs; had stood waiting there without a word being spoken but by herself, as the wherry made ready; and she had talked hopelessly, desperately, to relieve the tension.  Then they had gone off.  Sir James had looked back at her over his shoulder as the boat put out; and she had seen his lips move.  She had watched them grow smaller and smaller as they went, and then when a barge had come between her and them, she had gone home alone to wait for their return, and the tidings that they would bring.

And she, in a sense was responsible for it all.  If it had not been for her visit to Ralph, he would have handed the papers over to the authorities; he would be at liberty now, no doubt, as were Cromwell’s other agents; and, as she thought of it, her tortured heart asked again and again whether after all she had done right.

She went over the whole question, as she sat there, looking out over the river towards Lambeth, fingering the shutter, glancing now and again at the bent old figure of her aunt in her tall chair, and listening to the rip of the needle through the silk.  Could she have done otherwise?  Was her interference and advice after all but a piece of mad chivalry, unnecessary and unpractical?

And yet she knew that she would do it again, if the same circumstances arose.  It would be impossible to do otherwise.  Reason was against it; Mr. Herries had hinted as much with a quick lifting of his bushy eyebrows as she had told him the story.  It would have made no difference to Cromwell—­ah! but she had not done it for that; it was for the sake of Ralph himself; that he might not lose the one opportunity that came to him of making a movement back towards the honour he had forfeited.