"It is still in your power,
madame, to save your honour, which is now in peril. But there is
only one way in which you can accomplish it. If you put from you
all thought of marrying Lord Robert, England will believe that de
Quadra and those others lied. If you persist and carry out your
intention, you proclaim the truth of his report; and you see what
must inevitably follow."
She saw indeed, and, seeing, was afraid.
Within a few hours of that interview she delivered her answer to
Cecil, which was that she had no intention of marrying Dudley.
Because of her fear she saved her honour by sacrificing her
heart, by renouncing marriage with the only man she could have
taken for her mate of all who had wooed her. Yet the wound of
that renunciation was slow to heal. She trifled with the notion
of other marriages, but ever and anon, in her despair, perhaps,
we see her turning longing eyes towards the handsome Lord Robert,
later made Earl of Leicester. Once, indeed, some six years after
Amy's death, there was again some talk of her marrying him, which
was quickly quelled by a reopening of the question of how Amy
died. Between these two, between the fulfilment of her desire and
his ambition, stood the irreconcilable ghost of his poor murdered
wife.
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