"Out--let us go out, Robin. Let me have air," she almost panted,
as she drew him on.
Assuredly he would be master soon. Indeed, he might have been
master already but for that wife of his, that stumbling-block to
his ambition, who practiced the housewifely virtues at Cumnor
Place, and clung so tenaciously and so inconsiderately to life in
spite of all his plans to relieve her of the burden of it.
For a year and more his name had been coupled with the Queen's in
a tale that hurt her honour as a woman and imperilled her dignity
as a sovereign. Already in October of 1559 Alvarez de Quadra, the
Spanish ambassador, had written home: "I have learnt certain
things as to the terms on which the Queen and Lord Robert stand
towards each other which I could not have believed."
That was at a time when de Quadra was one of a dozen ambassadors
who were competing for her hand, and Lord Robert had, himself,
appeared to be an ally of de Quadra and an advocate of the
Spanish marriage with the Archduke Charles. But it was a presence
which nowise deceived the astute Spaniard, who employed a legion
of spies to keep him well informed.
"All the dallying with us," he wrote, "all the dallying with the
Swede, all the dallying there will be with the rest, one after
another, is merely to keep Lord Robert's enemies in play until
his villainy about his wife can be executed.
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