n the door that was in the bottom wall of the court.

'There is no other door here save that which goes into the stable where
the grille is. There I have a door to enter and fetch out the balls that
pass there.'

In the court itself it was absolute blackness.

'I trow we may talk very well without lights,' he said. 'Come into this
far corner.'

Yet, though there was no fear of being overheard, each of these three
stole almost on tiptoe and held his breath, and in the dark and shadowy
place they made a more dark and more shadowy patch with their heads all
close together.

Suddenly it was as if the Bishop dropped the veil that covered his
passions.

'I may well build tennis courts,' he said, and his voice had a ring of
wild and malignant passion. 'I may well build courts for tennis play.
Nothing else is left for me to do.'

In the blackness no word came from his listeners.

'You too may do the like,' the Bishop said. 'But I would you do it
quickly, for soon neither the one nor the other of you but will be
stripped so bare that you shall not have enough to buy balls with.'

The Duke made an impatient sound like a drawing in of his breath, but
still he spoke no word.

'I tell you, both of you,' the Bishop's voice came, 'that all of us have
been fooled. Who was it that helped to set on high this one that now
presses us down? I did! I!...

'It was I that called the masque at my house where first the King did
see her. It was I that advised her how to bear herself. And what
gratitude has been shown me? I have been sent to sequester myself in my
see; I have been set to gnaw my fingers as they had been old bones
thrown to a dog. Truly, no juicy meats have been my share. Yet it was I
set this woman where she sits....'

'I too have my griefs,' the Duke of Norfolk's voice came.

'And I, God wot,' came Wriothesley's.

'Why, you have been fooled,' Gardiner's voice; 'and well you know it.
For who was it that sent you both, one after the other, into France
thinking that you might make a match between the Lady Royal and the Duke
of Orleans?--Who but the Queen?--For well she knew that ye loved the
French and their King as they had been your brothers. And well we know
now that never in the mind of her, nor in that of the King whom she
bewitches and enslaves, was there any thought save that the Lady Royal
should be wedded to Spain. So ye are fooled.'

He let his voice sink low; then he raised it again--

'Fooled! Fooled