Howard. What
then? What then?

'Husband,' she said, 'have you naught forgotten?'

Udal, musing with his hand upon his chin, shook his head negligently.

'I keep more track of the King's leman than thou, then,' she said.
'What was it Longstaffe said of her?'

'Nay,' Udal answered, 'so turned my bowels were with jealousy that
little I noted.'

'Why, you are a fine spy,' she said. And she repeated to him that
Longstaffe had reported the King's commanding Katharine and Privy Seal
to join hands and be friends. Udal shook his head gloomily.

'I would not have my best pupil friends with Cromwell,' he said.

'Oh, magister,' she retorted, with a first touch of scorn in her
voice; 'have you, who have had so much truck with women, yet to learn
that you may command a woman to be friends with a man, yet no power on
earth shall make her love him. Nevertheless, well might Cromwell seek
to win her love, and thence these pardons.'

Udal started forward upon his tiptoes.

'I must to London!' he cried. She smiled at him as at a child.

'You are come to be of my advice,' she said.

Udal gazed at her with a wondering patronage.

'Why, what a wench it is,' he said, and he crooked his arm around her
ample waist. His face shone with pleasure. 'Angel!' he uttered; 'for
Angelos is the Greek for messenger, and signifieth more especially one
that bringeth good tidings.' Out of all this holus bolus of envoys,
ambassadors, cooks and prisoners one thing appeared plain to view:
that, for the first time, _a solis ortus cardine_, Cromwell had
loosened his grip of some that he held. 'And if Crummock looseneth
grip, Crummock's power in the land waneth.'

She looked up at him with a coy pleasure.

'Hatest Cromwell then full fell-ly?' she asked.

He put his hands upon her shoulders and solemnly regarded her.

'Woman,' he said; 'this man rideth England with seven thousand spies;
these three years I have lived in terror of my life. I have had no
bliss that fear hath not entered into--in very truth _inter delicias
semper aliquid saevi nos strangulavit_.' His lugubrious tones grew
higher with hatred; he raised one hand above his head and one gripped
tight her fat shoulder. 'Terror hath bestridden our realm of England;
no man dares to whisper his hate even to the rushes. Me! Me! Me!' he
reached a pitch of high-voiced fury. 'Me! _Virum doctissimum!_ Me, the
first learned man in Britain, he did force to write a play in the
vulgar tongue. Me, a