e husbands.'

'I could have calmed him,' Katharine said. 'He is always silent at a
word from me.'

Gardiner stood pondering, his head hanging down. His eyes, hard and
blue, flashed at her and then down again at the floor.

'They told me you were the King's good friend,' he said, resentfully.
'Your gossip Udal told my chaplain, and it hath been repeated.'

'They will talk where there are a many together,' Katharine answered;
'the magister is a notorious babbler and will have told many lies.'

'He is a spy of Privy Seal's and deep in his councils,' Gardiner
answered gloomily.

A heavy wind that had arisen hurled itself against the dark casement.
Little flaws of cold air penetrated the room, and the bishop pulled
his cap further down over his ears.

'My Lord Privy Seal would send my cousin to Calais where there is
fighting to come,' Katharine said.

Gardiner raised his head sharply at Cromwell's name.

'You speak sense at the end,' he muttered. To him too it had occurred
that if she was to be the King's peaceably, this madman must begone.
If Cromwell wished this lover of this girl out of the way, the reason
was not obscure.

'A man of his hath been here this very day,' Katharine said.

'Privy Seal learned whoremastering in Italy,' Gardiner cried
triumphantly. 'He saw signs that his Highness inclined to you. Have a
care for your little soul.'

'Why, I think Privy Seal had no such vain imagination,' Katharine
answered submissively. She would have laughed that the magister's
insane babblings should have raised such a coil; but Gardiner was a
man esteemed very saintly, and she kept her eyes on the floor.

'Give thou ear to no doctrines of Privy Seal's,' he answered swiftly.
'Thy soul should burn: I will curse thee. If the King shall offer thee
favours for thy friends come thou to me for spiritual guidance.'

She opened amazed and candid eyes upon him.

'But this is a folly,' she said. 'A King may regard one for a minute,
then it is past. Privy Seal would not bring me up against the King.'

He flashed his gloomy blue eyes at her, suspecting her, and still
threatening.

'I know how Privy Seal will plot,' he said passionately. 'Having
failed with one woman he will bring another.'

He clenched his hands angrily and unclenched them: the wind moaned for
a moment among the chimney stacks.

'So it is!' he cried, from deep down in his chest. 'If it were not so,
how is there all this clamour about his Highness an