’Nay, mistress, truly I will pry into no secrets that belong not to me,’ said the searcher, who could read no word of writing or print either.  ’This paper is no longer thine, and mine it never was.  It belongeth to the high court of parliament, and goeth straight to captain Heywood—­whom I will inform concerning the bribe wherewith thou didst seek to corrupt the conscience of a godly woman.’

Dorothy saw there was no help, and yielded to the grasp of the dame, who led her like a culprit, with burning cheek, back to her judge.

When Richard saw them his heart sank within him.

‘What hast thou found?’ he asked gruffly.

’I have found that which young mistress here would have had me cover with a bribe of ten times that your honour promised me for it,’ answered the woman.  ’She had it in her bosom, hid in a pocket little bigger than a crown-piece, inside her bodice.’

‘Ha, mistress Dorothy! is this true?’ asked Richard, turning on her a face of distress.

‘It is true,’ answered Dorothy, with downcast eyes—­far more ashamed however, of that which had not been discovered, and which might have justified Richard’s look, than of that which he now held in his hand.  ‘Prithee,’ she added, ‘do not read it till I am gone.’

‘That may hardly be,’ returned Richard, almost sullenly.  ’Upon this paper it may depend whether thou go at all.’

‘Believe me, Richard, it hath no importance,’ she said, and her blushes deepened.  ‘I would thou wouldst believe me.’

But as she said it, her conscience smote her.

Richard returned no answer, neither did he open the paper, but stood with his eyes fixed on the ground.

Dorothy meantime strove to quiet her conscience, saying to herself:  ‘It matters not; I must marry him one day—­an’ he will now have me.  Hath not the woman told him where the silly paper was hid?  And when I am married to him, then will I tell him all, and doubtless he will forgive me—­Nay, nay, I must tell him first, for he might not then wish to have me.  Lord!  Lord! what a time of lying it is!  Sure for myself I am no better than one of the wicked!’

But now Richard, slowly, reluctantly, with eyes averted, opened the paper, stood for an instant motionless, then suddenly raised it, and looked at it.  His face changed at once from midnight to morning, and the sunrise was red.  He put the paper to his lips, and thrust it inside his doublet.  It was his own letter to her by Marquis!  She had not thought to remove it from the place where she had carried it ever since receiving it.

‘And now, master Heywood, I may go where I will?’ said Dorothy, venturing a half-roguish, but wholly shamefaced glance at him.

But Dame Upstill was looking on, and Richard therefore brought as much of the midnight as would obey orders, back over his countenance as he answered: 

‘Nay, mistress.  An’ we had found aught upon thee of greater consequence it might have made a question.  But this hardly accounts for thy mission.  Doubtless thou bearest thy message in thy mind.’