During all that time the same old fear lived in my heart that Mary might fail to liberate Brandon.  She knew of the negotiations concerning the French marriage, as we all did, although only by an indefinite sort of hearsay, and I was sure the half-founded rumors that had reached her ears had long since become certainties, and that her heart was full of trouble and fear of her violent brother.  She would certainly be at her coaxing and wheedling again and on her best behavior, and I feared she might refrain from telling Henry of her trip to Grouche’s, knowing how severe he was in such matters and how furious he was sure to become at the discovery.  I was certain it was this fear which had prevented Mary from going directly to the king on our return to Greenwich from Scotland Palace, and I knew that her eating, bathing and dressing were but an excuse for a breathing spell before the dreaded interview.

This fear remained with me all the time I was away, but when I reasoned with myself I would smother it as well as I could with argumentative attempts at self-assurance.  I would say over and over to myself that Mary could not fail, and that even if she did, there was Jane, dear, sweet, thoughtful, unselfish Jane, who would not allow her to do so.  But as far as they go, our intuitions—­our “feelings,” as we call them—­are worth all the logic in the world, and you may say what you will, but my presentiments—­I speak for no one else—­are well to be minded.  There is another sense hidden about us that will develop as the race grows older.  I speak to posterity.

In proof of this statement, I now tell you that when I returned to London I found Brandon still in the terrible dungeon; and, worse still, he had been tried for murder, and had been condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered on the second Friday following.  Hanged!  Drawn!  Quartered!  It is time we were doing away with such barbarity.

We will now go back a month for the purpose of looking up the doings of a friend of ours, his grace, the Duke of Buckingham.

On the morning after the fatal battle of Billingsgate, the barber who had treated Brandon’s wounds had been called to London to dress a bruised knee for his grace, the duke.  In the course of the operation, an immense deal of information oozed out of the barber, one item of which was that he had the night before dressed nine wounds, great and small, for Master Brandon, the king’s friend.  This established the identity of the man who had rescued the girls, a fact of which Buckingham had had his suspicions all along.  So Brandon’s arrest followed, as I have already related to you.

I afterward learned from various sources how this nobleman began to avenge his mishap with Brandon at Mary’s ball when the latter broke his sword point.  First, he went to Newgate and gave orders to the keeper, who was his tool, to allow no communication with the prisoner, and it was by his instructions that Brandon had been confined in the worst dungeon in London.  Then he went down to Greenwich to take care of matters there, knowing that the king would learn of Brandon’s arrest and probably take steps for his liberation at once.