Upon Dr. Bayly’s report of his success, the marquis sent him back to tell the king that at eleven o’clock he would be waiting his majesty in a certain room to which the doctor would conduct him.

This was the room the marquis’s father had occupied and in which he died, called therefore ‘my lord Privy-seal’s chamber.’  Since then the marquis had never allowed any one to sleep in it, hardly any one to go into it; whence it came that although all the rest of the castle was crowded, this one room remained empty and fit for their purpose.

To understand the precautions taken to keep their interview a secret, we must remember that, although he had not a better friend in all England, such reason had the king to fear losing his protestant friends from their jealousy of catholic influence, that he had never invited the marquis of Worcester to sit with him in council; and that the marquis on his part was afraid both of injuring the cause of the king, and of being himself impeached for treason.  Should any of the king’s attendant lords discover that they were closeted together, he dreaded the suspicion and accusation of another Gowry conspiracy even.  His lordship therefore instructed Dr. Bayly to go, as the time drew nigh, to the drawing-room, which was next the marquis’s chamber, and the dining parlour, through both of which he must pass to reach the appointed place, and clear them of the company which might be in them.  The chaplain desiring to know how he was to manage it, so that it should not look strange and arouse suspicion, and what he should do if any were unwilling to go,—­

‘I will tell you what you shall do,’ said the marquis hastily, ’so that you shall not need to fear any such thing.  Go unto the yeoman of the wine-cellar, and bid him leave the keys of the wine-cellar with you, and all that you find in your way, invite them down into the cellar, and show them the keys, and I warrant you, you shall sweep the room of them, if there were a hundred.  And when you have done, leave them there.’

But having thus arranged, the marquis grew anxious again.  He remembered that it was not unusual to pass to the hall from the northern side of the fountain court, where were most of the rooms of the ladies’ gentlewomen, through the picture-gallery, entering it by a passage and stair which connected the bell-tower with one of its deep window recesses, and leaving it by a door in the middle of the opposite side, admitting to a stair in the thickness of the wall—­which led downwards, opening to the minstrels’ gallery on the left hand, and a little further below, to the organ loft in the chapel on the right hand.  It was not the least likely that any of the ladies or their attendants would be passing that way so late at night, but there was a possibility, and that was enough, the marquis being anxious and nervous, to render him more so.