had not held a book for four days on end.

'You are in a very great danger of your cousin,' Throckmorton was
repeating. 'Yet I will stay his coming.'

'Knight,' she said, 'this is a folly. If guards be needed to keep me
from his knife, the King shall give me guards.'

'His knife!' Throckmorton raised his hands in mock surprise. 'His
knife is a very little thing.'

'Ye would not say it an ye had come anear him when he was crossed,'
she said. 'I, who am passing brave, fear his knife more than aught
else in this world.'

'Oh, incorrigible woman,' he cried, 'thinking ever of straight things
and clear doings. It is not the knife of your cousin, but the devious
policy of Privy Seal that calleth for fear.'

'Why, or ever Privy Seal bind Tom to his policy he shall bind iron
bars to make a coil.'

He looked at her with lifted eyebrows, and then scratched with his
finger nail a tiny speck of mud from his shoe-point, balancing himself
back against the chimney piece and crossing his red legs above the
knees.

'Madam Howard,' he said, 'Privy Seal is minded to use thy cousin for a
battering-ram.' She was hardly minded to listen to him, and he uttered
stealthily, as if he were sure of moving her: 'Thy cousin shall breach
a way to the ears of the King--for thy ill fame to enter in.'

She leaned forward a little.

'Tell me of my ill fame,' she said; and at that moment Margot Poins,
her handmaid, placid still, large, fair and florid, came in to bring
her mistress an embroidery frame of oak wood painted with red stripes.
At Throckmorton's glance askance at the cow-like girl, Katharine said:
'Ye may speak afore Margot Poins. I ha' heard tales of her bringing.'

Margot kneeled at Katharine's feet to stretch a white linen cloth over
the frame on the floor.

'Privy Seal planneth thus,' Throckmorton answered Katharine's
challenge. He spoke low and level, hoping to see her twinge at every
new phrase. 'The King hath put from him every tale of thee; it is not
easy to bring him tales of those he loves, but very dangerous. But
Cromwell planneth to bring hither thy cousin and to keep him privily
till one day cometh the King to be alone with thee in thy bower or
his. Then, having removed all lets, shall Cromwell gird this cousin to
spring in upon thee and the King, screaming out and with his sword
drawn.' Still Katharine did not move, but leaned along her table of
yellow wood. 'It is not the sword ye shall fear,' he said slowly, 'but