ve carried letters for you; will you give me to die?' and
Margot wailed from a deep chest: 'The magister so well hath loved
thee. Give him not into die hands of Cur Crummock!--would I had never
told thee that they plotted!'

'Fool!' Throckmorton said; 'it is to the King she will go with her
tales.' He sat down upon her yellow-wood table and swung one crimson
leg before the other, laughing gleefully at Katharine's astonished
face.

'Sir,' she said at last; 'it is true that I will go, not to my lord
Privy Seal, but to the King.'

Throckmorton held up one of his white hands to the light and, with the
other, smoothed down its little finger.

'See you?' he gibed softly at Margot. 'How better I guess this thing,
mistress, than thou. For I do know her better.'

Katharine looked at him with a soft glance and said pitifully:

'Nevertheless, what shall it profit thee if I take a tale of thy
treasons to the King's Highness?'

Throckmorton sprang from the table and clapped his heels together on
the floor.

'It shall get me made an earl,' he said. 'The King will do that much
for the man that shall rid him of his minister.' He reflected foxily
and for a quick moment. 'Before God!' he said,'take this tale to the
King, for it is the true tale: That the Duke of Cleves seeks, in
France, to have done with his alliance. He will no more cleave to his
brother-in-law, but will make submission to the Emperor and to Rome!'

He paused, and then finished:

'For that news the King shall love you much more than before. But God
help me! it takes thee the more out of my reach!'

As they left the room to go to the audience with Cromwell, Katharine,
squaring the frills of her hood behind her back, could hear Margot
Poins grumbling to the magister:

'After these long days ye ha' time for five minutes to hold my hand,'
and the magister, perturbed and fumbling in his bosom, muttered:

'Nay, I have no minutes now. I must write much in Latin ere thy
mistress return.'

VI

'By God,' Wriothesley said when she entered the long gallery where the
men were. 'This is a fair woman!'

She had command of her features, and her eyes were upon the ground; it
was a part of a woman's upbringing to walk well, and her masters had
so taught her when she had lived with her grandmother, the old
duchess. Not the tips of her shoes shewed beneath the zigzag folds of
her russet-brown underskirt; the tips of her scarlet sleeves netted
with gold touched the