il; and, considering
only that her work of bringing him to God must begin again that night,
she let her thoughts rest upon the netting of her purse. The King, she
had heard, was with his council. Her uncle was come to Court, and
Gardiner of Winchester, and Cranmer of Canterbury, along with Sir A.
Wriothesley, and many other lords, so that she augured it would be a
very full council, and that night there would be a great banquet if she
was not mistaken.

She remembered that it was now many months since she had been shown for
Queen from that very gallery in the window that opened upon the
Cardinal's garden. The King had led her by the hand. There had been a
great crying out of many people of the lower sort that crowded the
terrace before the garden. Now the rain fell, and all was desolation. A
yeoman in brown fustian ran bending his head before the tempestuous
rain. A rook, blown impotently backwards, essayed slowly to cross
towards the western trees. Her eyes followed him until a great gust blew
him in a wider curve, backwards and up, and when again he steadied
himself he was no more than a blot on the wet greyness of the heavens.

There was an outcry at the door, and a woman ran in. She was crying out
still: she was all in grey, with the white coif of the Queen's service.
She fell down upon her knees, her hands held out.

'Pardon!' she cried. 'Pardon! Let not my brother come in. He prowls at
the door.'

It was Mary Hall, she that had been Mary Lascelles. The Queen came over
to raise her up, and to ask what it was she sought. But the woman wept
so loud, and so continually cried out that her brother was the fiend
incarnate, that the Queen could ask no questions. The Lady Mary looked
up over her book without stirring her body. Her eyes were awakened and
sardonic.

The waiting-maid looked affrightedly over her shoulders at the door.

'Well, your brother shall not come in here,' the Queen said. 'What would
he have done to you?'

'Pardon!' the woman cried out. 'Pardon!'

'Why, tell me of your fault,' the Queen said.

'I have given false witness!' Mary Hall blubbered out. 'I would not do
it. But you do not know how they confuse a body. And they threaten with
cords and thumbscrews.' She shuddered with her whole body. 'Pardon!' she
cried out. 'Pardon!'

And then suddenly she poured forth a babble of lamentations, wringing
her hands, and rubbing her lips together. She was a woman passed of
thirty, but thin still and