imes,' he answered fiercely. 'Should I have
come here merely to chatter with you?'

There was something sinister and harsh even in the bluish tinge of his
shaven jaws, and his agate-blue eyes were sombre, threatening and
suspicious.

She answered: 'But once,' and related the story very soberly.

He threatened her with his finger.

'Have a care that you speak truth. Things will not always remain in
this guise. I come to warn you that you speak the King with a loyal
purpose. His Highness listens sometimes to the promptings of his
women.'

'You might have saved your journey,' she answered. 'I could speak no
otherwise if he loved me.'

He gazed involuntarily round at the hangings as if he suspected a
listener.

'Your Most Reverence does ill to doubt me,' Katharine said
submissively. 'I am of a true house.'

'No house is true save where it finds its account,' he answered
moodily. He could not believe that she spoke the truth--for he was
unable to believe that any man could speak the truth--but it was true
she was poorly housed, raggedly dressed and hidden up in a corner.
Nevertheless, these might be artifices. He made ostentatiously and
disdainfully towards the door.

'Why, God keep you,'--he moved his fingers in a negligent blessing--'I
believe you are true, though you are of little use.' Suddenly he shot
out:

'If you would stay here in peace your cousin Culpepper must begone.'

Katharine put her hand to her heart in sudden fear of these men who
surrounded her and knew everything.

'What hath Tom done?' she asked.

'He hath put a shame upon thee,' the bishop answered. He had fallen
upon Sir Christopher Aske: he had been set in chains for it, in the
Duke's ward room. But upon the coming of the Queen the night before,
all misdemeanants had been cast loose again. Culpepper had been kept
by the guards from entering the palace, where he had no place. But he
had fallen in with the Magister Udal in the courtyard. Being maudlin
and friendly at the time, he had cast his arms round the magister's
neck claiming him for a loved acquaintance. They had drunk together
and had started, towards midnight, to find the chamber of Katharine
Howard, Culpepper seeking his cousin, and the magister, Margot Poins.
On the way they had enlisted other jovial souls, and the tumult in the
corridor had arisen. 'These scandals are best avoided,' the bishop
finished. 'I have known women lose their lives through them when they
came to hav