woman back
to obedience to her father was so great a part of his religion of
kingcraft. In that, when it came, there should be nothing but concord
and oblivion of bitter speeches, silent loyalty, and a throne upheld,
revered, and unassailable.

Udal groaned lamentably when the door closed upon him:

'I shall write to make men laugh! In the vulgar tongue! I! To gain
advancement!'

The Lady Mary's face hardly relaxed:

'Others of us take harder usage from my lord,' she said. She addressed
Katharine: 'You are named after my mother. I wish you a better fate
than your namesake had.' Her harsh voice dismayed Katharine, who had
been prepared to worship her. She had eaten nothing since dawn, she
had travelled very far and with this discouragement the pain in her
arm came back. She could find no words to say, and the Lady Mary
continued bitterly: 'But if you love that dear name and would sojourn
near me I would have you hide it. For--though I care little--I would
yet have women about me that believe my mother to have been foully
murdered.'

'I cannot easily dissemble.' Katharine found her tongue. 'Where I hate
I speak things disparaging.'

'That I attest to of old,' Udal commented. 'But I shall be shamed
before all learned doctors, if I write in the vulgar tongue.'

'Silence is ever best for me!' the Lady Mary answered her deadly. 'I
live in the shadows that I love.'

'That, full surely, shall be reversed,' Katharine said loyally.

'I do not ask it,' Mary said.

'Wherefore must I write in the vulgar tongue?' Udal asked again, 'Oh,
Mistress of my actions and my heart, what whim is this? The King is an
excellent good Latinist!'

'Too good!' the Lady Mary said bitterly. 'With his learning he hath
overset the Church of Christ.'

She spoke harshly to Katharine: 'What reversal should give my mother
her life again? Wench! Wench!...' Then she turned upon Udal
indifferently:

'God knows why this man would have you write in the vulgar tongue. But
so he wills it.'

Udal groaned.

'My dinner hour is here,' the Lady Mary said. 'I am very hungry. Get
you to your writing and take this lady to my women.'

VII

The Lady Mary's rooms were seventeen in number; they ran the one into
the other, but they could each be reached by the public corridor
alongside. It was Magister Udal's privilege, his condition being above
that of serving man, to make his way through the rooms if he knew that
the Lady Mary was not in one of the