r tongue.

'You cannot bribe me,' she said calmly. 'You have naught to give that I
have need of.'

But the King was so used to his daughter's speeches that, though he had
seldom seen her so mutinous, he could still ignore them.

'Well,' he said, 'I think you are angered with me for having set the
Magister in gaol----'

'And in addition,' the Lady Mary pursued her own speech, for she deemed
that she had thought of a thing to pain both him and the Queen, 'how
might I with a good conscience tell my cousin that you have a true
inclination to him? I do believe you have; it is this lady that has
given it you. But how much longer will this lady sway you? No doubt the
King o' Scots hath a new lady for you--and she will be on the French
side, for the King o' Scots is the French King's man.'

The King opened his mouth convulsively, but Katharine Howard laid her
hand right across it.

'You must be riding soon,' she said. 'I have had a collation set in my
chamber.' She was so used by now to the violent humours of these
Tudors. 'You have still to direct me,' she added, 'what is to be done
with these rived cattle.'

As they went through the door, the little Prince holding his father's
hand and she moving him gently by the shoulder, the child said--

'I thought ye wad ha' little profit speaking to my sister in her then
mood.'

The King, in the gallery, looked with a gentle apprehension at his wife.

'I trow ye think I ha' done wrong,' he said.

She answered--

'Oh nay; she must come to know one day what your Grace had to tell her.
Now it is over. But I would not have had you heated. For it is ill to
start riding in a sweat. You shall not go for an hour yet.'

That pleased him, for it made him think she was unwilling he should go.

In her own room the Lady Mary sat back in her chair and smiled grimly at
the ceiling.

'Body of God,' she said, 'I wish he had married this wench or ever he
saw my mother.' Nevertheless, upon reflection, she got pleasure from the
thought that her mother, with her Aragonia pride, had given the King
some ill hours before he had put her away to her death. Katharine of
Aragon had been no Katharine Howard to study her lord's ways and twist
him about her finger; and Mary took her rosary from a nail beside her
and told her beads for a quarter hour to calm herself.

V

There fell upon the castle a deep peace when the King and most of the
men were gone. The Queen had the ordering of all things