There was too
much at stake for that--a throne, no less.
And so, on the morning after that half-surrender of Elizabeth's,
we find my lord closeted with his henchman, Sir Richard Verney.
Sir Richard--like his master--was a greedy, unscrupulous,
ambitious scoundrel, prepared to go to any lengths for the sake
of such worldly advancement as it lay in my lord's power to give
him. My lord perforce used perfect frankness with this perfect
servant.
"Thou'lt rise or fall with me, Dick," quoth he. "Help me up,
then, and so mount with me. When I am King, as soon now I shall
be, look to me. Now to the thing that is to do. Thou'lt have
guessed it."
To Sir Richard it was an easy guess, considering how much already
he had been about this business. He signified as much.
My lord shifted in his elbow-chair, and drew his embroidered
bedgown of yellow satin closer about his shapely limbs.
"Hast failed me twice before, Richard," said he. "God's death,
man, fail me not again, or the last chance may go the way of the
others. There's a magic in the number three. See that I profit by
it, or I am undone, and thou with me."
"I'd not have failed before, but for that suspicious dotard
Bayley," grumbled Verney.
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