the secret door.

Next day, Queen Jane was forced by the Privy Council to resign her
crown, and that same night, accompanied by Cuthbert and Cicely, she
escaped by a secret passage from the Tower, and, taking a boat, made her
way to Sion House. Here, the following day, she and her husband were
arrested, and learnt the news that the Duke of Northumberland was in
captivity, and that Queen Mary had ascended the throne. Once more Lady
Jane was led back to the Tower, and as she entered by the Traitors' Gate
she saw Renard standing hard by, with a smile of bitter mockery in his
face.

"So," he said, "Epiphany is over. The Twelfth Day Queen has played her
part."


_III.--The Price of Pardon_


Simon Renard's influence was now for the time supreme. At his
instigation the Duke of Northumberland was tricked into a confession of
the Roman Catholic faith on the scaffold, and then executed. Ambitious
that Mary should marry Philip of Spain, he contrived by intrigue to kill
her affection for Courtenay, the young Earl of Devon, and succeeded so
successfully that Courtenay was placed under arrest, and the Princess
Elizabeth, with whom the earl had fallen in love, became the victim of
her sister's jealousy. Cuthbert, though not confined in a cell, was kept
prisoner in the Tower, and occupied quarters in the pantler's house.
Cicely had disappeared, and nothing had been heard of her since the
arrest of Lady Jane Grey at Sion House.