d a woman?'

'Most Reverend,' she said, 'there is no end to the inventions of
Magister Udal.'

'There is none to the machinations of the fiend, and Udal is of his
councils,' he said. 'Be careful, I tell you, for your soul's sake.
Cromwell shall come to you offering you great bribes. Have a care I
say!'

She attempted to say that Udal had no voice at all in Privy Seal's
councils, being a garrulous magpie that no sane man would trust. But
Gardiner had crossed his arms and stood, immense and shadowy, in the
firelight. He hissed irritably between his teeth when she spoke, as if
she interrupted his meditation.

'All the world knows Udal for his spy,' he said, sombrely. 'If Udal
hath babbled, God be thanked. I say again: if Privy Seal bring thee to
the King, come thou to me. But, by the Grace of Heaven, I will
forestall Privy Seal with thee and the King!'

She forbore to contradict him any more; he had this maggot in his
head, and was so wild to defeat Privy Seal with his own tool.

He muttered: 'Think you Privy Seal knoweth not the King's taste? I
tell you he hath seen an inclination in him towards you. This is a
plot, but I have sounded it!'

She let him talk, and asked, with a malice too fine for him to
discern:

'I should not shun the King's presence for my soul's sake?'

'God forbid,' he answered. 'I may use thee to bring down Privy Seal.'

He picked up a piece of bark from a faggot beside the fire and rolled
it between his fingers. She stood looking at him intently, her lips a
little parted, tall, graceful and submissive.

'You are more fair-skinned than any his Highness has favoured before,'
he said in a meditative voice. 'Yet Cromwell knows the King's tastes
better than any man.' He sank down into her tall-backed chair and
suddenly tossed the piece of bark into the fire. 'I would have you
walk across the floor, elevating your arms as you were the goddess
Flora.'

She tripped towards the door, held her arms above her head, turned her
long body to right and left, bent very low in a courtesy to him, and
let her hands fall restfully into her lap. The firelight shone upon
the folds of her dress and in the white lining of her hood. He looked
at her, leaning over the arm of the chair, his blue eyes hard with the
strenuous rage of his new project.

'You could take a part in an Italian interlude? A masque?'

'I have a better memory of the French or Latin,' she answered.

'You do not turn pale? Your knees kn