the lips of the cornet that came with this Lascelles to
fetch this Mary Lascelles or Hall: I, Throckmorton, a knight, swear that
I heard with mine own ears, how for ever as they rode, this Lascelles
plied this cornet with questions about your high self. As thus: 'Did you
favour any gentleman when you rode out, the cornet being of your guard?'
or, 'Had he heard a tale of one Pelham, a knight, of whom you should
have taken a kerchief?'--and this, that and the other, for ever, till
the cornet spewed at the hearing of him. Now, gracious and most high
Sovereign Consort, what is it that this man seeketh?"'

Again the Lady Mary paused to look at the Queen.

'Why,' Katharine said, 'so mine enemies will talk of me. I had been the
fool you styled me if I had not awaited it. But----' and she drew up
her body highly. 'My life is such and such shall be that none such arrow
shall pierce my corslet.'

'God help you,' the Lady Mary said. 'What has your life to do with it,
if you will not cut out the tongues of slanderers?'

She laughed mirthlessly, and added--

'Now this knight concludes--and it is as if he writhed his hands and
knelt and whined and kissed your feet--he concludeth with a prayer that
you will let him come again to the Court. "For," says he, "I will clean
your vessels, serve you at table, scrape the sweat off your horse, or do
all that is vilest. But suffer me to come that I may know and report to
you what there is whispered in these jail places."'

Katharine Howard said--

'I had rather borrow Pelham's kerchief.'

The Lady Mary dropped the parchment on to the floor at her side.

'I rede you do as this knight wills,' she said; 'for, amidst the little
sticklers of spies that are here, this knight, this emperor of spies,
moves as a pillow of shadow. He stalks amongst them as, in the night,
the dread and awful lion of Numidia. He shall be to you more a corslet
of proof than all the virtue that your life may borrow from the precepts
of Diana. We, that are royal and sit in high places, have our feet in
such mire.'

'Now before God on His throne,' Katharine Howard said, 'if you be of
royal blood, I will teach you a lesson. For hear me----'

'No, I will hear thee no more,' the Lady Mary answered; 'I will teach
thee. For thou art not the only one in this land to be proud. I will
show thee such a pride as shall make thee blush.'

She stood up and came slowly down the steps of the dais. She squared
back her shoulders