She said:  “I so wanted to come home to England and be married where my dear brother could give me away, but I was in such mortal dread of Francis, and there was no other means of escape, so—­”

“God’s death!  If I had but one other sister like you, I swear before heaven I’d have myself hanged.  Married to Brandon?  Fool! idiot! what do you mean?  Married to Brandon!  Jesu!  You’ll drive me mad!  Just one other like you in England, and the whole damned kingdom might sink; I’d have none of it.  Married to Brandon without my consent!”

“No! no! brother,” answered Mary softly, leaning affectionately against his bulky form; “do you suppose I would do that?  Now don’t be unkind to me when I have been away from you so long!  You gave your consent four months ago.  Do you not remember?  You know I would never have done it otherwise.”

“Yes, I know!  You would not do anything—­you did not want; and it seems equally certain that in the end you always manage to do everything you do want.  Hell and furies!”

“Why! brother, I will leave it to my Lord Bishop of York if you did not promise me that day, in this very room, and almost on this very spot, that if I would marry Louis of France I might marry whomsoever I wished when he should die.  Of course you knew, after what I had said, whom I should choose, so I went to a little church in company with Queen Claude, and took my hair down and married him, and I am his wife, and no power on earth can make it otherwise,” and she looked up into his face with a defiant little pout, as much as to say, “Now, what are you going to do about it?”

Henry looked at her in surprise and then burst out laughing.  “Married to Brandon with your hair down?” And he roared again, holding his sides.  “Well, you do beat the devil; there’s no denying that.  Poor old Louis!  That was a good joke on him.  I’ll stake my crown he was glad to die!  You kept it warm enough for him, I make no doubt.”

“Well,” said Mary, with a little shrug of her shoulders, “he would marry me.”

“Yes, and now poor Brandon doesn’t know the trouble ahead of him, either.  He has my pity, by Jove!”

“Oh, that is different,” returned Mary, and her eyes burned softly, and her whole person fairly radiated, so expressive was she of the fact that “it was different.”

Different?  Yes, as light from darkness; as love from loathing; as heaven from the other place; as Brandon from Louis; and that tells it all.

Henry turned to Wolsey:  “Have you ever heard anything equal to it, my Lord Bishop?”

My Lord Bishop, of course, never had; nothing that even approached it.

“What are we to do about it?” continued Henry, still addressing Wolsey.

[Illustration]

The bishop assumed a thoughtful expression, as if to appear deliberate in so great a matter, and said:  “I see but one thing that can be done,” and then he threw in a few soft, oily words upon the troubled waters that made Mary wish she had never called him “thou butcher’s cur,” and Henry, after a pause, asked:  “Where is Brandon?  He is a good fellow, after all, and what we can’t help we must endure.  He’ll find punishment enough in you.  Tell him to come home—­I suppose you have him hid around some place—­and we’ll try to do something for him.”