There was dead silence as the young girl had finished speaking. Wessex was staring at her, and Mr. Thomas Norton assures us that he burst out laughing, a laugh which the Queen's printer stigmatizes as "heartless and unworthy a high-born gentleman! for truly," he continues, "the Lady Ursula Glynde was moved by the spirit of God in thus making a tardy confession, and His Grace, methinks, should have shown a proper spirit of reverence before this manifestation of God."
But if Wessex laughed at this supreme and palpitating moment, surely his laugh must have come from the very bitterness of his soul. As far as he knew Ursula had told nothing but a strangely concocted lie. To him, who had--as he thought--seen her with the blood of Don Miguel still warm upon her hands, this extraordinary tale of threatened honour and timely interference was but a tangled tissue of wanton falsehoods--another in the long series which she had told to him.
He had no idea of any sacrifice on her part, and merely looked upon her present action as a weak attempt to save him from the gallows and no more.
She just liked him well enough apparently not to wish to see him hang, but that was all. And this suddenly struck him as ridiculous, paltry, and childish, a silly bravado which caused him to laugh. Perhaps she desired to save him publicly at slight cost to herself, in order that she might yet occupy one day the position which she had so avowedly coveted since her childhood--that of Duchess of Wessex!
The stain of murder, which was really on her hands, she was full willing that it should rest on him, only slightly palliated by the lie which she had told.
Strange, strange perversion of a girlish soul!
With dulled ears and brain in a turmoil Wessex only partly heard the questions and cross-questions which his judges now put to her. She never wavered from her original story, but repeated it again and again, circumstantially and without hesitation. Never once did she look towards the bar.
"Lady Ursula Glynde," said Lord Chandois finally and with solemn earnestness, "do you swear upon your honour and conscience that you have spoken the truth?"
"I swear it upon mine honour and conscience."
"'Tis false from beginning to end," protested Wessex loudly.