t this music musician for calling himself
my gallant. Then goes the musicker to my grandam, bidding the old
Duchess rise up again one hour after she had sought her bed. So comes my
grandam and turns the key in the padlock and looketh in over all the
gallimaufrey of lights and pasties and revels.

'Why,' she continued. 'I think I was beaten upon that occasion, but I
could not well tell why. And I was put to sleep in another room. And
later came my father home from some war. And he was angry that I had
consorted so with false minions, and had me away to his own poor house.
And there I had Udal for my Magister and evil fare and many beatings.
But this Mary Lascelles was my bed-fellow.'

'Why, forget it,' the Lady Mary said again.

'Other teachers would bid me remember it that I might remain humble,'
Katharine answered.

'Y'are humble enow and to spare,' the Lady Mary said. 'And these are not
good memories for such a place as this. Y'had best keep this Mary
Lascelles at a great distance.'

Katharine said--

'No; for I have passed my word.'

'Then reward her very fully,' the Lady Mary commended, and the Queen
answered--

'No, for that is against my conscience. What have I to fear now that I
be Queen?'

Mary shrugged her squared shoulders.

'Where is your Latin,' she said, 'with its _nulla dies felix_--call no
day fortunate till it be ended.'

'I will set another text against that,' she said, 'and that from holy
sayings--that _justus ab aestimatione non timebit_.'

'Well,' Mary answered, 'you will make your bed how you will. But I think
you would better have learned of these maids how to steer a course than
of your Magister and the Signor Plutarchus.'

The Queen did not answer her, save by begging her to read the King's
letter to his Holiness.

'And surely,' she said, 'if I had never read in the noble Romans I had
never had the trick of tongue to gar the King do so much of what I
will.'

'Why, God help you,' her step-daughter said. 'Pray you may never come to
repent it.'

PART TWO

THE THREATENED RIFT

I

In these summer days there was much faring abroad in the broad lands to
north and to south of the Pontefract Castle. The sunlight lay across
moors and uplands. The King was come with all his many to Newcastle; but
no Scots King was there to meet him. So he went farther to northwards.
His butchers drove before him herds of cattle that they slew some of
each night: their hooves made a broad