ial journey to report of the envoy from Cleves. He
spoke again swiftly, turning right round to Cromwell.

'Sir,' he said, 'study above all to please the King. For unless you
guide us we are lost indeed.'

Cromwell worked his lips one upon another and moved a hand.

'Aye,' Wriothesley continued; 'it can be done only by bringing the
King's Highness and the Lady Katharine to a marriage.'

'Only by that?' Cromwell asked enigmatically.

Throckmorton spoke at last:

'Your lordship jests,' he said; 'since the King is not a man, but a
high and beneficent prince with a noble stomach.'

Cromwell tapped him upon the cheek.

'That you do see through a millstone I know,' he said. 'But I was
minded to hear how these men do think. You and I do think alike.'

'Aye, my lord,' Throckmorton answered boldly. 'But in ten minutes I
must be with the Lady Katharine, and I am minded to hear the upshot of
this conference.'

Cromwell laughed at him sunnily:

'Go and do your message with the lady. An you hasten, you may return
ere ever this conference ends, since slow wits like ours need a store
of words to speak their minds with.'

Lascelles, the silent spy of the archbishop, devoured with envious
eyes Throckmorton's great back and golden beard. For his life he dared
not speak three words unbidden in this company. But Throckmorton being
gone the discussion renewed itself, Wriothesley speaking again.

He voiced always the same ideas, for the same motives: Cromwell must
maintain his place at the cost of all things, for the sake of all
these men who leaned upon him. And it was certain that the King loved
this lady. If he had sent her few gifts and given her no titles nor
farms, it was because--either of nature or to enhance the King's
appetite--she shewed a prudish disposition. But day by day and week in
week out the King went with his little son in his times of ease to the
rooms of the Lady Mary. And there he went, assuredly, not to see the
glum face of the daughter that hated him, but to converse in Latin
with his daughter's waiting-maid of honour. All the Court knew this.
Who there had not seen how the King smiled when he came new from the
Lady Mary's rooms? He was heavy enow at all other times. This fair
woman that hated alike the new faith and all its ways had utterly
bewitched and enslaved the King's eyes, ears and understanding. If the
King would have Katharine Howard his wife the King must have her. Anne
of Cleves must be sen