ly at her.

'All the men ye have known have prayed ye to be rid of him,' he said;
'ye will live to rue.'

'Sir,' she answered him, 'I had rather live to rue the injury my
cousin should do me than live to rue the having injured him.' She
paused to think for a moment. 'When I am Queen,' she said, 'I will
have the King set him in a command of ships to sail westward over the
seas. He shall have the seeking for the Hesperides or the city of
Atalanta, where still the golden age remains to be a model and
ensample for us.' Her eyes looked past Throckmorton. 'My cousin hath a
steadfast nature to be gone on such pilgrimages. And I would the
discovery were made, this King being King and I his Queen; rather that
than the regaining of France; more good should come to Christendom.'

'Madam Howard,' Throckmorton grinned at her, 'if men of our day and
kin do come upon any city where yet remaineth the golden age, very
soon shall be shewn the miracle of the corruptibility of gold. The
rod of our corruption no golden state shall defy.'

She smiled friendlily at him.

'There we part company,' she said. 'For I do believe God made this
world to be bettered. I think, and answer your question, I could never
ha' loved you. For you be a child of the new Italians and I a disciple
of the older holders of that land, who wrote, Cato voicing it for
them, "Virtue spreadeth even as leaven leaveneth bread; a little lump
in your flour in the end shall redeem all the loaf of the Republic."'

He smiled for a moment noiselessly, his mouth open but no sound coming
out. Then he coaxed her:

'Answer my two other questions.'

'Knight,' she answered; 'for the truth of the last, ask, with
thumbscrews, the witnesses ye found in Lincolnshire, and believe them
as ye list. Or ask at the mouth of a draw-well if fishes be below in
the water before ye ask a woman if she be chaste. For the other,
consider of my actions hereafter if I do love the King's person.'

'Why, then, I shall never have kiss from mouth of thine,' he said, and
pulled his cap down over his eyes to depart.

'When the sun shall set in the east,' she retorted, and gave him her
hand to kiss.

Margot Poins raised her large, fair head from her stitching after he
was gone, and asked:

'Tell me truly how ye love the King's person. Often I ha' thought of
it; for I could love only a man more thin.'

'Child,' Katharine answered, 'his Highness distilleth from his person
a make of majesty; there