"The Lieutenant of the Tower awaits Your Majesty's pleasure and His Grace of Wessex in the next room."
Then only did Mary Tudor's self-control entirely desert her. Forgetting all her dignity and pride, her self-will and masterfulness, she clung to the man she loved with passionate ardour, sobbing and entreating.
"No! no!--they shall not take you!--they dare not! Say but one word to me, my dear lord . . . what is it to you?--'twere all my life to me. . . . What should we care for the opinion of the world?--Am I not above it? . . . so will you be when you are King of England. . . ."
Wessex had need of all his firmness, and of all his courage, to free himself as gently as he could from her clinging arms. He waited until her half-hysterical paroxysm of grief had subsided, smoothing with tender hand her moist hair and burning forehead. She was a woman beside herself with grief, almost sublime in this hour of madness.
"I will not let you go!" she repeated persistently.
Through the door there came the sound of a slight clash of arms. The Lieutenant of the Tower and his guard were impatiently waiting for their prisoner. Wessex saw Mary's whole figure stiffen at this muffled sound. Like an enraged animal she turned towards the door. For one second he wondered what she would do, how much humiliation her uncontrolled passion would heap upon him, through some mad, impulsive action. He jumped to his feet, and, regardless of all save the imminence of this critical moment, he seized both her wrists in an iron grip, striving through the infliction of this physical pain to bring back her wandering senses.
She looked him straight in the face with a tender and appealing gaze----
"Did you not know that I loved you even to humiliation?" she said.
"May God and all His angels bless you for that love," he replied earnestly, "but before Him and them I swear to you that if you do not allow the justice of your realm to have its will with me, I'll not survive your own disgrace and mine."
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out that picture of unbendable determination expressed in his whole attitude, and which she at last felt that nothing would conquer. The rigidity of her figure relaxed, the fury died out from her heart, she only felt inexpressibly sorrowful, helpless and broken-hearted.