n orders that the spy outside should be
removed, for he was useless. Thus Throckmorton could speak with a
measure of freedom.

'Madam Howard,' he said; 'ye use me not well in this. Ye are not so
stable nor so safe in your place as that ye may, without counsel or
guidance, risk all our necks with these mad pranks.'

'Goodman,' she said, 'I asked ye not to come into my barque. If ye
hang to the gunwale, is it my fault an ye be drowned in my foundering
if I founder?'

'Tell me why ye go to Windsor,' he urged.

'Goodman,' she answered, 'to ask the Queen if she be the King's wife.'

'Oh, folly!' he cried out, and added softly, 'Madam Howard, ye be
monstrous fair. I do think ye be the fairest woman in the world. I
cannot sleep for thinking on thee.'

'Poor soul!' she mocked him.

'But, bethink you,' he said; 'the Queen is a woman, not a man. All
your fairness shall not help you with her. Neither yet your sweet
tongue nor your specious reasons. Nor yet your faith, for she is half
a Protestant.'

'If she be the King's wife,' Katharine said, 'I will not be Queen. If
she care enow for her queenship to lie over it, I will not be Queen
either. For I will not be in any quarrel where lies are--either of my
side or of another's.'

'God help us all!' Throckmorton mocked her. 'Here is my neck engaged
on your quarrel--and by now a dozen others. Udal hath lied for you in
the Cleves matter; so have I. If ye be not Queen to save us ere
Cromwell's teeth be drawn, our days are over and past.'

He spoke with so much earnestness that Katharine was moved to consider
her speaking.

'Knight,' she said at last, 'I never asked ye to lie to Cromwell over
the Cleves matter. I never asked Udal. God knows, I had the rather be
dead than ye had done it. I flush and grow hot each time I think this
was done for me. I never asked ye to be of my quarrel--nay, I take
shame that I have not ere this sent to Privy Seal to say that ye have
lied, and Cleves is false to him.' She pointed an accusing finger at
him: 'I take shame; ye have shamed me.'

He laughed a little, but he bent a leg to her.

'Some man must save thee from thy folly's fruits,' he said. 'For some
men love thee. And I love thee so my head aches.'

She smiled upon him faintly.

'For that, I believe, I have saved thy neck,' she said. 'My conscience
cried: "Tell Privy Seal the truth"; my heart uttered: "Hast few men
that love thee and do not pursue thee."'

Suddenly he knelt at h