The countess paused, and looked a general illumination at Dorothy.

‘I told you so, madam,’ returned Dorothy, rather stupidly perhaps.

‘Little fool!’ rejoined the countess, half-angered:  ’dost suppose the wife of a man like my Ned needs to be told such things by a green goose like thee?  Thou wouldst have had me content that the man was honest—­me, who had forgotten the word in his tenfold more than honesty!  Bah, child! thou knowest not the love of a woman.  I could weep salt tears over a hair pulled from his noble head.  And thou to talk of telling me so, hussy!  Marry, forsooth!’

And taking Dorothy to her bosom, she wept like a relenting storm.

One sentence more she read ere she hurried with the letter to her father-in-law.  The sentence was this: 

’So I pray let not any of my friends that’s there, believe anything, until ye have the perfect relation of it from myself.’

The pleasure of receiving news from his son did but little, however, to disperse the cloud that hung about the marquis.  I do not know whether, or how far, he had been advised of the provision made for the king’s clearness by the anticipated self-sacrifice of Glamorgan, but I doubt if a full knowledge thereof gives any ground for disagreement with the judgment of the marquis, which seems, pretty plainly, to have been, that the king’s behaviour in the matter was neither that of a Christian nor a gentleman.  As in the case of Strafford, he had accepted the offered sacrifice, and, in view of possible chances, had in Glamorgan’s commission pretermitted the usual authoritative formalities, thus keeping it in his power, with Glamorgan’s connivance, it must be confessed, but at Glamorgan’s expense, to repudiate his agency.  This he had now done in a message to the parliament, and this the marquis knew.

His majesty had also written to lord Ormond as follows:  ’And albeit I have too just cause, for the clearing of my honour, to prosecute Glamorgan in a legal way, yet I will have you suspend the execution,’ &c.  At the same time his secretary wrote thus to Ormond and the council:  ‘And since the warrant is not’ ’sealed with the signet,’ &c., &c., ’your lordships cannot but judge it to be at least surreptitiously gotten, if not worse; for his majesty saith he remembers it not;’ and thus again privately to Ormond:  ’The king hath commanded me to advertise your lordship that the patent for making the said lord Herbert of Raglan earl of Glamorgan is not passed the great seal here, so as he is no peer of this kingdom; notwithstanding he styles himself, and hath treated with the rebels in Ireland, by the name of earl of Glamorgan, which is as vainly taken upon him as his pretended warrant (if any such be) was surreptitiously gotten.’  The title had, meanwhile, been used by the king himself in many communications with the earl.

These letters never came, I presume, to the marquis’s knowledge, but they go far to show that his feeling, even were it a little embittered by the memory of their midnight conference and his hopes therefrom, went no farther than the conduct of his majesty justified.  It was no wonder that the straightforward old man, walking erect to ruin for his king, should fret and fume, yea, yield to downright wrath and enforced contempt.