y that I ever came there as your woman; for who there shall open
their hearts to me?'

He laughed at her comfortably still.

'You may put it about that you hate me,' he said. 'You may mix with
them that love me not. In the end you may worm yourself into their
secrets.'

Again a heavy flush covered Katharine's face from the chin to the
brow. It was so difficult for her to keep from speaking her mind with
her lips that she felt as if her whole face must be telling the truth
to him. But he continued to shake his plump sides as if he were
uttering inaudible, 'Ho--ho--ho's.'

'That is so easy,' he said. 'A child, I think, could compass it.' He
put his hands behind his back and stretched his legs apart. She was
very pleasant to look at with her flushings, and it amused him to toy
with frightened women. 'It is in this way that you shall earn his
Highness' bread.' It was known that Mary had this treasonable
correspondence with the Emperor; in the devilish malignancy of her
heart she desired that her sacred father should be cast down and
slain, and continually she implored her cousin to invade her father's
dominions, she sending him maps, plans of the new castles in building
and the names of such as were malevolent within the realm.
'Therefore,' he finished, 'if you could discover her channels and
those channels could then be stopped up, you would indeed both earn
your bread and enter into high favour.'

He began again good-humouredly to give her careful directions as to
how she should act; as for instance by offering to make for the
printers a fair copy of the Lady Mary's Commentary upon Plautus. By
pretending that certain words were obscure to her, she should find
opportunities for coming suddenly into the room, and she should afford
herself excuses for searching among his mistress's papers without
awakening suspicions.

'Why, my face is too ingenuous,' Katharine said. 'I am not made for
playing the spy.'

He laughed at her.

'That is so much the better,' he said. 'The best spies are those that
have open countenances. It needs but a little schooling.'

'I should get me a hang-dog look very soon,' she answered. She paused
for a minute and then spoke earnestly, holding out her hands. 'I would
you would set me a nobler task. Very surely it is shameful that a
daughter should so hate the father that begat her; and I know the
angels weep to see her desire that the great and noble prince should
be cast down and slain by