he right to that with a lowering of her eyebrows.

'I too would see him a most high prince,' she said. 'I would see him
shed lustre upon his friends, terror upon his foes, and a great light
upon this realm and age.'

She paused to touch him earnestly with one long hand, and to brush
back a strand of her hair. Down the gallery she saw Lascelles moving
to speak with Throckmorton and Wriothesley holding the Archbishop
earnestly by the sleeve.

'See,' she said, 'you are surrounded now by traitors that will bring
you down. In foreign lands your cause wavers. I tell you, five minutes
agone I wished you swept away.'

Cromwell raised his eyebrows.

'Why, I knew that this was difficult fighting,' he said. 'But I know
not what giveth me your good wishes.'

'My lord,' she answered, 'it came to me in my mind: What man is there
in the land save Privy Seal that so loveth his master's cause?'

Cromwell laughed.

'How well do you love this King,' he said.

'I love this King; I love this land,' she said, 'as Cato loved Rome or
Leonidas his realm of Sparta.'

Cromwell pondered, looking down at his foot; his lips moved furtively,
he folded his hand inside his sleeves; and he shook his head when
again she made to speak. He desired another minute for thought.

'This I perceive to be the pact you have it in your mind to make,' he
said at last, 'that if you come to sway the King towards Rome I shall
still stay his man and yours?'

She looked at him, her lips parted with a slight surprise that he
should so well have voiced thoughts that she had hardly put into
words. Then her faith rose in her again and moved her to pitiful
earnestness.

'My lord,' she uttered, and stretched out one hand. 'Come over to us.
'Tis such great pity else--'tis such pity else.'

She looked again at Throckmorton, who, in the distance, was surveying
the Archbishop's spy with a sardonic amusement, and a great
mournfulness went through her. For there was the traitor and here
before her was the betrayed. Throckmorton had told her enough to know
that he was conspiring against his master, and Cromwell trusted
Throckmorton before any man in the land; and it was as if she saw one
man with a dagger hovering behind another. With her woman's instinct
she felt that the man about to die was the better man, though he were
her foe. She was minded--she was filled with a great desire to say:
'Believe no word that Throckmorton shall tell you. The Duke of Cleves
is no