“Yes, I have,” I responded, for the time completely silenced.  With her favorite tactics, she had, as usual, put me in the wrong, though I soon came again to the attack.

“But he is so base that I grieve to see you with him.”

“I suppose he is not very good,” she responded, “but it seems to be the way of these people among whom I have fallen, and he cannot harm me.”

“Oh! but he can.  One does not go near smallpox, and there is a moral contagion quite as dangerous, if not so perceptible, and equally to be avoided.  It must be a wonderfully healthy moral nature, pure and chaste to the core, that will be entirely contagion-proof and safe from it.”

She hung her head in thought, and then lifted her eyes appealingly to me.  “Am I not that, Edwin?  Tell me!  Tell me frankly; am I not?  It is the one thing of good I have always striven for.  I am so full of other faults that if I have not that there is no good in me.”  Her eyes and voice were full of tears, and I knew in my heart that I stood before as pure a soul as ever came from the hand of God.

“You are, your majesty; never doubt,” I answered.  “It is pre-eminently the one thing in womanhood to which all mankind kneels.”  And I fell upon my knee and kissed her hand with a sense of reverence, faith and trust that has never left me from that day to this.  As to my estimate of how Francis would act when Louis should die, you will see that I was right.

Not long after this Lady Caskoden and I were given permission to return to England, and immediately prepared for our homeward journey.

Ah! it was pretty to see Jane bustling about, making ready for our departure—­superintending the packing of our boxes and also superintending me.  That was her great task.  I never was so thankful for riches as when they enabled me to allow Jane full sway among the Paris shops.  But at last, all the fine things being packed, and Mary having kissed us both—­mind you, both—­we got our little retinue together and out we went, through St. Denis, then ho! for dear old England.

As we left, Mary placed in my hands a letter for Brandon, whose bulk was so reassuring that I knew he had never been out of her thoughts.  I looked at the letter a moment and said, in all seriousness:  “Your majesty, had I not better provide an extra box for it?”

She gave a nervous little laugh, and the tears filled her eyes, as she whispered huskily:  “I fancy there is one who will not think it too large.  Good-bye! good-bye!” So we left Mary, fair, sweet girl-queen, all alone among those terrible strangers; alone with one little English maiden, seven years of age—­Anne Boleyn.

CHAPTER XXI

Letters from a Queen

Upon our return to England I left Jane down in Suffolk with her uncle, Lord Bolingbroke, having determined never to permit her to come within sight of King Henry again, if I could prevent it.  I then went up to London with the twofold purpose of seeing Brandon and resigning my place as Master of the Dance.