It never occurred to Mary that Brandon might suffer death for attempting to run away with her.  She knew only too well that she alone was to blame, not only for that, but for all that had taken place between them, and never for one moment thought that he might be punished for her fault, even admitting there was fault in any one, which she was by no means ready to do.

The trouble in her mind, growing out of a lack of news from Brandon, was of a general nature, and the possibility of his death had no place in her thoughts.  Nevertheless, for the second time, Brandon had been condemned to die for her sake.  The king’s seal had stamped the warrant for the execution, and the headsman had sharpened his ax and could almost count the golden fee for his butchery.

Mary found the king playing cards with de Longueville.  There was a roomful of courtiers, and as she entered she was the target for every eye; but she was on familiar ground now, and did not care for the glances nor the observers, most of whom she despised.  She was the princess again and full of self-confidence; so she went straight to the object of her visit, the king.  She had not made up her mind just what to say first, there was so much; but Henry saved her the trouble.  He, of course, was in a great rage, and denounced Mary’s conduct as unnatural and treasonable; the latter, in Henry’s mind, being a crime many times greater than the breaking of all the commandments put together, in one fell, composite act.  All this the king had communicated to Mary by the lips of Wolsey the evening before, and Mary had received it with a silent scorn that would have withered any one but the worthy bishop of York.  As I said, when Mary approached her brother, he saved her the trouble of deciding where to begin by speaking first himself, and his words were of a part with his nature—­violent, cruel and vulgar.  He abused her and called her all the vile names in his ample vocabulary of billingsgate.  The queen was present and aided and abetted with a word now and then, until Henry, with her help, at last succeeded in working himself into a towering passion, and wound up by calling Mary a vile wanton in plainer terms than I like to write.  This aroused all the antagonism in the girl, and there was plenty of it.  She feared Henry no more than she feared me.  Her eyes flashed a fire that made even the king draw back as she exclaimed:  “You give me that name and expect me to remember you are my brother?  There are words that make a mother hate her first-born, and that is one.  Tell me what I have done to deserve it?  I expected to hear of ingratitude and disobedience and all that, but supposed you had at least some traces of brotherly feeling—­for ties of blood are hard to break—­even if you have of late lost all semblance to man or king.”

This was hitting Henry hard, for it was beginning to be the talk in every mouth that he was leaving all the affairs of state to Wolsey and spending his time in puerile amusement.  “The toward hope which at all poyntes appeared in the younge Kynge” was beginning to look, after all, like nothing more than the old-time royal cold fire, made to consume but not to warm the nation.