While I was paying the waterman, Frances ran up the stairs to the garden, and when I followed I saw her talking to the king, so I stopped ten or twelve paces from them and removed my hat. Being in their lee, the wind brought the king's words to me, and I imagined, from the loud tone in which he spoke, that he intended me to hear what he had to say. Perhaps he suspected that I had helped Frances in her morning's escapade.
"I am greatly disappointed, my angel, my beauty," said the king, "that you have taken this morning's excursion."
So he knew of her "excursion," and doubtless had instigated the visit of the sheriffs to the Old Swan.
"What has your angel done this morning to displease her king?" asked Frances, with a laugh so merry that one might well have supposed it genuine.
"What has she done this morning?" repeated the king. "She has been to visit the man who seeks the king's life. That is what she has done."
He had hit the nail squarely on the head at the first stroke, but whether his accuracy was a mere guess, or the result of knowledge, I did not know. I trembled, awaiting the outcome of my cousin's conference.
At first Frances appeared to be horror-stricken, and her surprise seemed to know no bounds, but after a moment of splendid acting, her manner changed to one of righteous indignation, touched with grief, because the king had so wrongfully accused her.
"Your Majesty horrifies me!" she exclaimed, stepping back from the king. "Is there a man in all England who would seek his king's life?"
"There is," returned his Majesty. "And you have been to visit him."
Frances denied nothing. She was simply stunned by grief and benumbed by a sense of outrage put upon her by the king. So after a moment of inimitable pantomime, she answered, speaking softly:--
"I fear a gentle madness has touched your Majesty's brain, else you would not so cruelly accuse me. You have so many weighty affairs to trouble you and to prey on your mind that it is no wonder--"
"Did you not set out this morning with the avowed purpose of going to your father's house?" asked the king.
"Yes, your Majesty," she answered soothingly, almost pityingly. "What then?"
"Am I a prisoner in Whitehall that I may not come and go at will?" she asked indignantly, knowing well the maxim of battle that the best way to meet a charge is by a countercharge. "If so, I pray leave to go home to my father, where I shall not be spied upon and suspected of evil if I but go abroad for an hour."