“Mercy?” exclaimed Mary scornfully.  “You shall receive justice, but no mercy.”

“I do not sue for myself,” rejoined Jane, “but for my husband.  I have come to offer myself for him.  If your highness has any pity for me, extend it to him, and heap his faults on my head.”

Queen Mary was deeply moved.  Had not Gardiner intervened, she would undoubtedly have granted the request; but Gardiner suggested that the price of the pardon should be the public reconciliation of Lady Jane and her husband with the Church of Rome.

“I cannot,” said Jane.  “I will die for him, but I cannot destroy my soul alive.”

IV.—­The Torture Chamber and the Block

After a week’s imprisonment, Cuthbert was closely questioned, and his answers being deemed unsatisfactory, he was ordered to be examined under torture.  With fiendish delight Nightgall took him to the horrible chamber.  There, the first thing that he saw was the tortured, mangled figure of Lord Dudley, covered from head to foot by a blood-coloured cloth.

“You here?” cried the ghastly, distorted figure.  “Where is Jane?  Has she fled?  Has she escaped?”

“She has surrendered herself,” replied Cholmondeley, “in the hope of obtaining your pardon.”

“False hope!  Delusive expectation!” exclaimed Dudley, in tones of anguish, as he was carried from the room.  “She will share my fate.  Oh God!  I am her destroyer!”

Cholmondeley, as soon as his master had been borne away, was seized by the torturers and placed on the rack.  He determined that not a sound should escape him, and though his whole frame seemed rent asunder, he bravely kept his resolve.

“Go on,” cried Nightgall, as the torturers paused.  “Turn the roller again.”

Even as he spoke Cholmondeley fainted, and, finding that no answers could be extracted from him, he was taken back to his cell and flung upon a heap of straw.  As he lay there, Nightgall, with diabolical cruelty, brought Cicely to his side, and bade her look on his nerveless arms and crippled limbs, and mockingly offered to set him free if Cicely would marry him of her own free will.  When at Cuthbert’s instigation she refused, he forced her away, shrieking for help.

Cuthbert sank once more into insensibility.  He came to his senses again to find that men were chafing his limbs and bathing his temples, and that Renard was in his cell.  At the Spaniard’s order he was given a cup of wine, and the rest having withdrawn, Renard questioned him further.

While this examination was going on the cell door opened softly, and a masked figure appeared.  It was Nightgall, who, bribed by De Noailles, had come to assassinate Renard.  He flung himself on his intended victim, and was about to dispatch him with his poniard, when Cuthbert, summoning up all his strength, intervened.

Finding that he had two men to deal with instead of one, the gaoler sprang to his feet, and rushed from the dungeon.  Renard followed him, furious with rage, and Cuthbert at once took advantage of the opportunity to escape.