er.'

The hostess received him with a bridling favour, rubbing her cheek
pleasantly, whilst Udal was seeking to persuade himself that, since
the woman was in law no wife of his, he had no need to fear.
Nevertheless rage tore him when the doctor, leaning his back against
the window-side, talked to the woman. She stood between them holding a
pewter flagon of mulled hypocras upon a salver of burnished pewter.

'Who I be,' he said, gazing complacently at her, 'is a poor student of
good letters; how I be here is as one of the amanuenses of the Duke of
Norfolk. Origen, Eusebius telleth, had seven, given him by Ambrosius
to do his behest. The duke hath but two, given him by the grace of God
and of the King's high mercy.'

'I make no doubt,' she answered, 'ye be as learned as the seven were.'

'I be twice as hungry,' he laughed; 'but with me it has always been
"_Quid scribam non quemadmodum_," wherein I follow Seneca.'

'Doctor,' the magister uttered, quivering, 'you shall tell me why this
mission--which is a very special embassy--at this time cometh to this
town of Paris.'

'Magister,' the doctor answered, wagging his beard upon his poor
collar to signify that he desired to keep his neck where it was, 'I
know not.'

'Injurious man,' Udal fulminated, 'I be no spy.'

The doctor surveyed his perturbation with cross-legged calmness.

'An ye were,' he said--'and it is renowned that ye are--ye could get
no knowledge from where none is.'

'Why, tell me of a woman,' the hostess said. 'Who is Kat Howard?'

The doctor's blue eyes shot a hard glance at her, and he let his head
sink down.

'I have copied to her eyes a sonnet or twain,' he said, 'and they were
writ by my master, Surrey, the Duke o' Norfolk's son.'

'Then these rave upon her as doth the magister?' she asked.

'Why, an ye be jealous of the magister here,' the doctor clipped his
words precisely, 'cast him away and take me who am a proper
sweetheart.'

'I be wed,' she answered pleasantly.

'What matters that,' he said, 'when husbands are not near?'

The magister, torn between his unaccustomed gust of jealousy and the
desire to hide his marriage from a disastrous discovery in England,
clutched with straining fingers at his gown.

'Tell wherefore cometh your mission,' he said.

'We spoke of a fair woman,' the doctor answered. 'Shame it were before
Apollo and Priapus that men's missions should come before kings'
mistresses.'

'It is true, then, that she