He had listened to them courteously, had nodded quietly as Chris explained what it was that Ralph had done, and then almost without comment had given his promise.  It seemed as if the Archbishop could not even form an opinion, and still less express one, until he had heard what his Highness had to say.

* * * * *

Chris walked to the window and the lawyer followed him.

“Placentia!” said Mr. Herries, “I do not wonder at it.  It is even more pleasing from within.”

He stood, a prim, black figure, looking out at the glorious view, the shining waterway studded with spots of colour, the long bank of the river opposite, and the spires of London city lying in a blue heat-haze far away to the left.

Chris stared at it too, but with unseeing eyes.  It seemed as if all power of sensation had left him.  The suspense of the last weeks had corroded the surfaces of his soul, and the intensity to which it was now rising seemed to have paralysed what was left.  He found himself picturing the little house at Charing where Beatrice was waiting, and, he knew, praying; and he reminded himself that the next time he saw her he would know all, whether death or life was to be Ralph’s sentence.  The solemn quiet and the air of rich and comfortable tranquillity which the palace wore, and which had impressed itself on his mind even in the hundred yards he had walked in it, gave him an added sense of what it was that lay over his brother, the huge passionless forces with which he had become entangled.

Then he turned round.  His father was sitting at the table, his head on his hand; and Nicholas was staring round the grave room with the solemnity of a child, looking strangely rustic and out of place in these surroundings.

It was very quiet as Chris leaned against the window-shutter, in his secular habit, with his hands clasped behind his back, and looked.  Once a footstep passed in the corridor outside, and the floor vibrated slightly to the tread; once a horn blew somewhere far away; and from the river now and again came the cry of a waterman, or the throb of oars in rowlocks.

Sir James looked up once, opened his lips as if to speak; and then dropped his head on to his hand again.

The waiting seemed interminable.

Chris turned round to the window once more, slipped his breviary out of his pocket, and opened it.  He made the sign of the cross and began—­

"In nomine Patris et Filii...."

Then the second door opened; he turned back abruptly; there was a rustle of silk, and the Archbishop came through in his habit and gown.

Chris bowed slightly as the prelate went past him briskly towards the table where Sir James was now standing up, and searched his features eagerly for an omen.  There was nothing to be read there; his smooth large-eyed face was smiling quietly as its manner was, and his wide lips were slightly parted.