thy wrists
with my two fingers. I am stronger than most men.'

'Why, no!' the girl cried; 'I may not sit still. Get you gone. I will
run upon your errand. If you had knelt to as many men as I have you
could not sit still either. And not one of my men was pardoned.'

She ran from the room with a sidelong step like a magpie's, and her
laugh rang out discordantly from the corridor.

The Lady Mary sat reading her Plautus in her large painted gallery,
with all her maids about her sewing, some at a dress for her, some
winding silk for their own uses. The old knight stood holding his
sturdy hands apart between a rope of wool that his namesake Lady
Rochford was making into balls. Other gentlemen were beside some of
the maids, toying with their silks or whispering in their ears. No one
much marked Katharine Howard.

She glided to her lady and kissed the dry hand that lay in the lap
motionless. Mary raised her eyes from her book, looked for a leisurely
time at the girl's face, and then began again to read. Old Rochford
winked pleasantly at her, and, after she had saluted his cousin, he
begged her to hold the wool in his stead, for his hands, which were
used to sword and shield, were very cold, and his legs, inured to the
saddle, brooked standing very ill.

'Cicely Elliott hath a headache,' Katharine said; 'she bade me send
you to her.'

He waited before her, helping her to adjust the wool on to her white
hands, and she uttered, in a low voice:

'She hath taken my letter for me.'

He said, 'Why, what a' the plague's name ...' and stood fingering his
peaked little beard in a gentle perplexity.

Lady Rochford pulled at her wool and gave a hissing sigh of pain, for
the joint of her wrist was swollen.

'It has always been easterly winds in January since the Holy Blood of
Hailes was lost,' she sighed. 'In its day I could get me some ease in
the wrist by touching the phial that held it.' She shivered with
discomfort, and smiled distractedly upon Katharine. Her large and
buxom face was mild, and she seemed upon the point of shedding tears.

'Why, if you will put your wool round a stool, I will wind it for
you,' Katharine said, because the gentle helplessness of the large
woman filled her with compassion, as if this were her old, mild
mother.

Lady Rochford shook her head disconsolately.

'Then I must do something else, and my bones would ache more. But I
would you would make my cousin Rochford ask the Archbishop where th