Well!  Jane told it all in a moment, and Catherine was so horrified that she was like to faint.  She went with her hair-lifting horror to the king, and poured into his ears a tale of imprudence and debauchery well calculated to start his righteous, virtue-prompted indignation into a threatening flame.

Mary, Jane, Brandon and myself were at once summoned to the presence of both their majesties and soundly reprimanded.  Three of us were ordered to leave the court before we could speak a word in self-defense, and Jane had enough of her favorite truth for once.  Mary, however, came to our rescue with her coaxing eloquence and potent, feminine logic, and soon convinced Henry that the queen, who really counted for little with him, had made a mountain out of a very small mole-hill.  Thus the royal wrath was appeased to such an extent that the order for expulsion was modified to a command that there be no more quartette gatherings in Princess Mary’s parlor.  This leniency was more easy for the princess to bring about, by reason of the fact that she had not spoken to her brother since the day she went to see him after Wolsey’s visit, and had been so roughly driven off.  At first, upon her refusal to speak to him—­after the Wolsey visit—­Henry was angry on account of what he called her insolence; but as she did not seem to care for that, and as his anger did nothing toward unsealing her lips, he pretended indifference.  Still the same stubborn silence was maintained.  This soon began to amuse the king, and of late he had been trying to be on friendly terms again with his sister through a series of elephantine antics and bear-like pleasantries, which were the most dismal failures—­that is, in the way of bringing about a reconciliation.  They were more successful from a comical point of view.  So Henry was really glad for something that would loosen the tongue usually so lively, and for an opportunity to gratify his sister from whom he was demanding such a sacrifice, and for whom he expected to receive no less a price than the help of Louis of France, the most powerful king of Europe, to the imperial crown.

Thus our meetings were broken up, and Brandon knew his dream was over, and that any effort to see the princess would probably result in disaster for them both; for him certainly.

The king upon that same day told Mary of the intercepted letter sent by her to Brandon at Newgate, and accused her of what he was pleased to term an improper feeling for a low-born fellow.

Mary at once sent a full account of the communication in a letter to Brandon, who read it with no small degree of ill comfort as the harbinger of trouble.

“I had better leave here soon, or I may go without my head,” he remarked.  “When that thought gets to working in the king’s brain, he will strike, and I—­shall fall.”