added. 'I pray God ye answer none.'

He pondered for a moment, and leaning back against the chimney-piece
crossed one silk-stockinged, thin, red leg. He spoke very swiftly, so
that his words were like lightning.

'And the first is: An ye had never come here but elsewhere seen me,
had ye it in you to ha' loved me? And the second: How ye love the
King's person? And the third: Were ye your cousin's leman?'

Leaning against the table she seemed slowly to grow stiff in her pose;
her eyes dilated; the colour left her cheeks. She spoke no word.

'Privy Seal hath sent a man to hasten thy cousin back to here,' he
said at last, after his eyes had steadily surveyed her face. She sat
back in her chair, and the strip of sewing fell to wreathe, white and
red and green, round her skirts on the floor.

'I have sent a botcher to stay his coming,' he said slowly. 'Thy maid
Margot's brother.'

'I had forgotten Tom,' she said with long pauses between her words.
She had forgotten her cousin and playmate. She had given no single
thought to him since a day that she no longer remembered.

Reading the expression of her face and interpreting her slow words,
Throckmorton was satisfied in his mind that she had been her cousin's.

'He hath passed from Calais to Dover, but I swear to you that he shall
never come to you,' he said. 'I have others here.' He had none, but he
was set to comfort her.

'Poor Tom!' she uttered again almost in a whisper.

'Thus,' he uttered slowly, 'you have a great danger.'

She was silent, thinking of her Lincolnshire past, and he began again:

'Therefore ye have need of help from me as I from thee.'

'Aye,' he said, 'you shall advise with me. For at least, if I may not
have the pleasure of thy body, I will have the enjoyment of thy
converse.' His voice became husky for a moment. 'Mayhap it is a
madness in me to cling to thee; I do set in jeopardy my earthly riches
and my hope of profit. But it is Macchiavelli who says: "_If ye hoard
gold and at the end have not pleasure in what gold may pay, ye had
better have loitered in pleasing meadows and hearkened to the
madrigals of sweet singing fowls._"' He waved his hand: 'Ye see I be
still somewhat of a philosopher, though at times madness takes me.'

She was still silent--shaken into thinking of the past she had had
with her cousin when she had been very poor in Lincolnshire; she had
had leisure to read good letters there, and the time to think of them.
Now she