‘What time?’ he asked.

‘For meeting the king,’ replied the doctor.

‘What king?’ rejoined the marquis, in a kind of bewildered horror.

The more he came to himself, the more distressed he seemed, and the more unwilling to keep the appointment he had been so eager to make, so that at length even Dr. Bayly was tempted to doubt something evil in the ’design that carried with it such a conflict within the bosom of the actor.’  It soon became evident, however, that it was but the dread of such possible consequences as I have already indicated that thus moved him.

‘Fie, fie!’ he said; ‘I would to God I had let it alone.’

‘My lord,’ said the doctor, ’you know your own heart best.  If there be nothing in your intentions but what is good and justifiable, you need not fear; if otherwise, it is never too late to repent.’

‘Ah, doctor!’ returned the marquis with troubled look, ’I thought I had been sure of one friend, and that you would never have harboured the least suspicion of me.  God knows my heart:  I have no other intention towards his majesty than to make him a glorious man here, and a glorified saint hereafter.’

‘Then, my lord,’ said Dr. Bayly, ’shake off these fears together with the drowsiness that begat them.  Honi soit qui mal y pense.’

‘Oh, but I am not of that order!’ said the marquis; ’but I thank God I wear that motto about my heart, to as much purpose as they who wear it about their arms.’

‘He then,’ reports the doctor, ’began to be a little pleasant, and took a pipe of tobacco, and a little glass full of aqua mirabilis, and said, “Come now, let us go in the name of God,” crossing himself.’

My love for the marquis has led me to recount this curious story with greater minuteness than is necessary to the understanding of Dorothy’s part in what follows, but the worthy doctor’s account is so graphic that even for its own sake, had it been fitting, I would gladly have copied it word for word from the Certamen Religiosum.

It is indeed a strange story—­king and marquis, attended by a doctor of divinity, of the faith of the one, but the trusted friend of the other, meeting—­at midnight, although in the house of the marquis—­to discuss points of theology—­both king and marquis in mortal terror of discovery.

Meantime Dorothy had done as she had been ordered, had felt her way through the darkness to the picture-gallery, had locked the door at the top of the one stair, and taken her stand in the recess at the foot of the other—­in pitch darkness, close to the king’s bedchamber, for the gallery was but thirteen feet in width, keeping watch over him!  The darkness felt like awe around her.

The door of the chamber opened:  it gave no sound, but the glimmer of the night-light shone out.  By that she saw a figure enter the gallery.  The door closed softly and slowly, and all was darkness again.  No sound of movement across the floor followed:  but she heard a deep sigh, as from a sorely burdened heart.  Then, in an agonised whisper, as if wrung by torture from the depths of the spirit, came the words:  ’Oh Stafford, thou art avenged!  I left thee to thy fate, and God hath left me to mine.  Thou didst go for me to the scaffold, but thou wilt not out of my chamber.  O God, deliver me from blood-guiltiness.’