one o'clock. The Lady Mary neither spoke nor moved, but the
old knight shrank away from Katharine, and affected to be talking in
the ear of Lady Rochford, who went on winding her wool. Throckmorton
turned on his heels and swung away, his eyes on the floor, but with a
grin on his evil face.

He left a sudden whisper behind him, and then the silence fell once
more. Katharine stood, a tall figure, holding out the hands on which
the wool was as if she were praying to some invisible deity or
welcoming some invisible lover. Some heads were raised to look at her,
but they fell again; the old knight shuffled nearer her to whisper
hoarsely from his moustachioed lips:

'Your serving man hath reported. Pray God we come safe out of this!'
Then he went out of the room. Lady Rochford sighed deeply, for no
apparent reason.

After a time the Lady Mary raised her head and made a minute, cold
beckoning to Katharine. Her dry finger pointed to a word in her book
of Plautus.

'Tell me what you know of this,' she commanded.

The play was the _Menechmi_, and the phrase ran, '_Nimis autem bene
ora commetavi_....' It was difficult for Katharine to bring her mind
down to this text, for she had been wondering if indeed her time were
at an end before it had begun. She said:

'I have never loved this play very well,' to excuse herself.

'Then you are out of the fashion,' Mary said coldly, 'for this
_Menechmi_ is prized here above all the rest, and shall be played at
Winchester's before his Highness.'

Katharine bowed her head submissively, and read the words again.

'I remember me,' she said, 'I had this play in a manuscript where your
_commetavi_ read _commentavi_.'

Mary kept her eyes upon the girl's face, and said:

'Signifying?'

'Why, it signifies,' Katharine said, 'that Messenio did well mark a
face. If you read _commetavi_ it should mean that he scratched it with
his nails so that it resembled a harrowed field; if _commentavi_, that
he bethumped it with his fist so that bruises came out like the stops
on a fair writing.'

'It is true that you are a good Latinist,' Mary said
expressionlessly. 'Bring me my inkhorn to that window. I will write
down your _commentavi_.'

Katharine lifted the inkhorn from its hole in the arm of the chair and
gracefully followed the stiff and rigid figure into the embrasure of a
distant window.

Mary bent her head over the book that she held in her hand, and
writing in the margin, she uttered: