ce, and his stiff gait--all these things were signs of
his hostility to her. And his mention of Anne Boleyn, who had been
Queen, much as she was, and of her bitter fate, this mention, if it
could not be a threat, was, at least, a reminder meant to give her fears
and misgiving. When she had been a child--and afterwards, until the very
day when she had been shown for Queen--her uncle had always treated her
with a black disdain, as he treated all the rest of the world. When he
had--and it was rarely enough--come to visit her grandmother, the old
Duchess of Norfolk, he had always been like that. Through the old
woman's huge, lonely, and ugly halls he had always stridden, halting a
little over the rushes, and all creatures must keep out of his way. Once
he had kicked her little dog, once he had pushed her aside; but
probably, then, when she had been no more than a child, he had not known
who she was, for she had lived with the servants and played with the
servants' children, much like one of them, and her grandmother had known
little of the household or its ways.

She answered him sharply--

'I have heard that you were no good friend to your niece, Anne Boleyn,
when she was in her troubles.'

He swallowed in his throat and gazed impassively at the distant oak
tree, nevertheless his knee trembled with fury. And Katharine knew very
well that if, more than another, he took pleasure in giving pain with
his words, he bore the pain of other's words less well than most men.

'The Queen Anne,' he said, 'was a heretic. No better was she than a
Protestant. She battened upon the goods of our Church. Why should I
defend her?'

'Uncle,' she said, 'where got you the jewel in your bonnet?'

He started a little back at that, and the small veins in his yellow
eye-whites grew inflamed with blood.

'Queen----' he brought out between rage and astonishment that she
should dare the taunt.

'I think it came from the great chalice of the Abbey of Rising,' she
said. 'We are valiant defenders of the Church, who wear its spoils upon
our very brows.'

It was as if she had thrown down a glove to him and to a great many that
were behind him.

She knew very well where she stood, and she knew very well what her
uncle and his friends awaited for her, for Margot, her maid, brought her
alike the gossip of the Court and the loudly voiced threats and
aspirations of the city. For the Protestants--she knew them and cared
little for them. She did not