od. Or I had rather he had never been cast down.
And that I swear.'

'Well, you are a fool,' the Lady Mary said. 'Let me look upon this
knight's letter.'

'I have not read it,' Katharine said.

'Then will I,' the Lady Mary answered. She made across the room to where
the paper lay upon the table beside the great globe of the earth. She
came back; she turned her round to the Queen; she made her a deep
reverence, so that her black gown spread out stiffly around her, and,
keeping her eyes ironically on Katharine's face, she mounted backward up
to the chair that was beneath the dais.

Katharine put her hand over her heart.

'What mean you?' she said. 'You have never sat there before.'

'That is not true,' the Lady Mary said harshly. 'For this last three
days I have practised how, thus backward, I might climb to this chair
and, thus seemly, sit in it.'

'Even then?' Katharine asked.

'Even then I will be asked no more questions,' her step-daughter
answered. 'This signifieth that I ha' heard enow o' thy voice, Queen.'

Katharine did not dare to speak, for she knew well this girl's tyrannous
and capricious nature. But she was nearly faint with emotion and reached
sideways for the chair at the table; there she sat and gazed at the girl
beneath the dais, her lips parted, her body leaning forward.

Mary spread out the great sheet of Throckmorton's parchment letter upon
her black knees. She bent forward so that the light from the mantel at
the room-end might fall upon the writing.

'It seemeth,' she said ironically,'that one descrieth better at the
humble end of the room than here on high'--and she read whilst the Queen
panted.

At last she raised her eyes and bent them darkly upon the Queen's face.

'Will you do what this knight asks?' she uttered. 'For what he asks
seemeth prudent.'

'A' God's name,' Katharine said, 'let me not now hear of this man.'

'Why,' the Lady Mary answered coolly, 'if I am to be of the Queen's
alliance I must be of the Queen's council and my voice have a weight.'

'But will you? Will you?' Katharine brought out.

'Will you listen to my voice?' Mary said. 'I will not listen to yours.
Hear now what this goodly knight saith. For, if I am to be your
well-wisher, I must call him goodly that so well wishes to you.'

Katharine wrung her hands.

'Ye torture me,' she said.

'Well, I have been tortured,' Mary answered, 'and I have come through it
and live.'

She swallowed in her throat, a