’My lord! my lord! surely your lordship knoweth better of his majesty.’

’To know better may be to know worse, master Boteler.  Was it not enough to suffer my lord Glamorgan to be unjustly imprisoned by my lord marquis of Ormond for what he had His majesty’s authority for, but that he must in print protest against his proceedings and his own allowance, and not yet recall it?  But I will pray for him, and that he may be more constant to his friends, and as soon as my other employments will give leave, you shall have a convoy to fetch securely your despatches.’

Herewith Mr. Boteler was dismissed, lord Charles accompanying him from the room.

‘False as ice!’ muttered the marquis to himself, left as he supposed alone.  ’My boy, thou hast built on a quicksand, and thy house goeth down to the deep.  I am wroth with myself that ever I dreamed of moving such a bag of chaff to return to the bosom of his honourable mother.’

‘My lord,’ said lady Glamorgan from behind the bed-curtains, ’have you forgotten that I and my long ears are here?’

’Ha! art thou indeed there, my mad Irishwoman!  I had verily forgotten thee.  But is not this king of ours as the Minotaur, dwelling in the labyrinths of deceit, and devouring the noblest in the land?  There was his own Strafford, next his foolish Laud, and now comes my son, worth a host of such!’

’In his letter, my lord of Glamorgan complaineth not of his majesty’s usage,’ said the countess.

’My lord of Glamorgan is patient as Grisel.  He would pass through the pains of purgatory with never a grumble.  But purgatory is for none such as he.  In good sooth I am made of different stuff.  My soul doth loath deceit, and worse in a king than a clown.  What king is he that will lie for a kingdom!’

Day after day passed, and nothing was done to speed the messenger, who grew more and more anxious to procure his despatches and be gone; but lord Worcester, through the king’s behaviour to his honourable and self-forgetting son, with whom he had never had a difference except on the point of his blind devotion to his majesty’s affairs, had so lost faith in the king himself that he had no heart for his business.  It seems also that for his son’s sake he wished to delay Mr. Boteler, in order that a messenger of his own might reach Glamorgan before Ormond should receive the king’s despatches.  For a whole fortnight therefore no further steps were taken, and Boteler, wearied out, bethought him of applying to the countess to see whether she would not use her influence in his behalf.  I am thus particular about Boteler’s affair, because through it Dorothy came to know what the king’s behaviour had been, and what the marquis thought of it; she was in the room when Mr. Boteler waited on her mistress.

‘May it please your ladyship,’ he said, ’I have sought speech of you that I might beg your aid for the king’s business, remembering you of the hearty affection my master the king beareth towards your lord and all his house.’