CHAPTER XLVII.

PRIDE.

Alice, full of A. and E., received the humble Master Cavendish in even a more cold and distant manner than he had ever seen her put on before.

'Thy master is dead? I know it! Dost thou come to claim ought of me?'

'No, lady, I want nothing; I did but think, knowing thy former interest in my poor lord, and my close attachment to his person, that some little information of his latter end might be acceptable to the Lady Alice, from her humble servant.'

'Another time it might have been. I have only one question to ask of thee: was he shriven by a priest before he died?'

'He was, by Doctor Palmes.'

'Then I ask no more. He died a Catholic.'

'He did, lady; and recommended his royal master to look well after these heretics and heresies so prevalent.'

'Then why did he not order Lord De Freston to be burnt!'

Even Cavendish, with all his knowledge of her character, little expected this; but when he afterwards heard her speak of those hospitable friends, and all connected with them, as if she would joy to see them tortured upon the rack, flayed alive, or burnt at the stake, his blood chilled within him, and he truly thought within himself: 'This is Cold Hall indeed!'

'I ask no questions,' she added, 'of thy master's fortunes. The great Cardinal died before he departed for York. He died as soon as I left him. His was but a pitiful struggle afterwards. Had he been as firm to Rome as I would have had him, he might now have been his master's lord. But vengeance yet awaits the enemies of Rome, and weak instruments may be used for their overthrow. Are you a staunch friend to the Pope?'

This was a leading question to Cavendish, who, at that time, neither wished to be thought a heretic by denying the Supremacy of the Pope, nor to be disloyal to his new master by denying his supremacy in the visible church in matters purely temporal. But he knew well that the Papacy must have the jurisdiction of temporalities as well as spiritualities in the church, and that Alice held the foreign pontiff to be her supreme idol.

He had a difficult question to answer, but one which his tact alone could elude, so as not to create bitter animadversion against him. He therefore replied--

'The Pope, lady, has so many staunch advocates like thyself, that the friendship of such insignificant beings as I am could redound but little to his greatness. Thou, lady, art, I am sure, his warm friend, and thine influence in this neighborhood must be paramount. Has the Pope lost any power hereabouts?'

'If he has it shall be restored to him. The great patron of the divine arts, the illustrious advocate of public singers, the glorious supporter of divine architecture, the magnificent exhibitor of all that is great, noble, praiseworthy, and splendid in the worship of the Virgin, the angels, and the saints, shall not want a friend in me, though hereabouts there may want an example of fire and faggot to exterminate his enemies. Where is thine abode in these parts, Master Cavendish?'

'I am but a traveller, a visitor, a mere bearer of a message to my lord's friend.'

'And what was it, Master Secretary, what was it? Ha! did the little man want anything from Alice De Clinton?'

Cavendish marvelled indeed at the hauteur of this quondam subservient mistress of the Cardinal, his master; and within his soul, faithful as it was to a kind-hearted individual who was ever gracious to him, it revolted at the contumacy with which she, the exalted lady of Wolsey's notice, now dared to treat his memory. His memory of his master rose triumphant, and his remembrance, too, of the estimation in which Ellen was held by him came with lively impression to his mind, and he could not help punishing the haughty Alice with a declaration which he little expected she would so quickly resent.

With gratitude in his heart, a far more active agent at that moment than political prudence or cautious wisdom, he replied--

'I am upon a visit to Lord De Freston, the Lady Ellen, and Latimer.'

The haughty lady looked as if she would annihilate him with one fierce glance of her serpent eye. She rose without forgetting for a moment that she was treating a stranger, or a former friend, in her own house. She rose stately, coolly, slowly, erected her head just as a serpent of the most stupendous kind might do previous to her all determined rush upon her victim, and something more than a hiss from her forked tongue issued from her throat:

'Then how darest thou to tread the threshold of Goldwell Hall? Knowest thou not that between the daughters of Rome and those of the Devil there can be no alliance? and darest thou to contaminate with thy polluted feet the hall of the faithful, after having been an inmate of the tomb of an heretic?

'Perish, traitor, perish!--back, go back to Freston Tower! Look thence upon the birth-place of thy master; but know thou that ere another year shall sweep over the heads of those whom now thou dost call thine host, hostess, and friend, their power shall perish if they be not themselves departed.'

The very words, gesture, and cold-blooded determination of the impenetrable marble then before him, had an effect of creating a chill upon his whole frame; and he felt how truly his friends on the opposite bank of the Orwell had described the being who then stood before him.

He was so astonished at her whole bearing, that he made no attempt to retire; and had not Alice, with inconceivable scorn, pointed to the door, and without any kind of respect bade a servant show him the way out, he would have remained even longer spell-bound by the very extravagant and extraordinary manner of the speech of Alice De Clinton. He departed, however, with much less pleasant sensations than those with which he had entered; and as he looked back upon that solitary mansion, he exclaimed in a distich, which afterwards, years afterwards, changed the name of the place,

'Goldwell is cold, and colder far than all This living corpse, a tenant of Cold Hall.'

He returned to his cheerful friends at Freston, to narrate the adventure of his reception. They were not surprised at his declaration,

'That never in the face of woman did he see so cold-blooded a feature as that of Alice De Clinton.'

Little did any of them at that time suspect the plot hatching against their peace.

It was determined that the usual festivities of Christmas should be observed by De Freston as his ancestors had done before him; and Cavendish was invited to see the tenantry of the hospitable lord do justice to the long beloved and venerated old man.

Latimer had declined living in the mansion of Humphrey Wingfield in Brook Street, Ipswich; and was looked upon as the future owner of Freston Castle and all its wide spread domain. He richly merited respect, and was as happy in the acknowledgment of every friend of De Freston and his daughter, as Albert, Prince of Great Britain, is at this moment in the hearts of Victoria's loyal subjects. But none are without enemies.

Alice had managed to hire Wingfield House as her town residence, and strange did people think the difference between the lively possessor who left it, and the stern occupier who occasionally, with rigid cold pomp, occupied the state apartments.

It was said, however, that she intended to move into the town at Christmas, and to leave _Cold Hall_ (as it is called to this day); and consequently she had wood conveyed from her own groves to the yards of the mansion, and made every preparation to have at least the rooms well warmed.

But Alice had a burning within which few knew anything of, except her father confessor, Duncan, and those priests of Rome who worked upon her fanatic disposition. This was inflamed against all heretics, even to detest their abodes, and she had secretly resolved that the flame of Ellen--the E. of her consecrated candles--should be put out.

How this was done may be better narrated in another chapter. This is sufficient to show how weak minds may be acted upon to do deeds, under the imagination of devotion, which are abhorrent to all truth, and such as pure religion would revolt at.

'Oh who can tell what prejudice may call Devotion, when the devil doth enthral?'