with cinnamon, that Katharine Howard very
much loved. She had never tasted them till one day the King had come
to visit his daughter, bearing with his own hands a great box of them.
He had had the receipt from Thomas Cromwell, who had had it of a Jew
in Italy. Mary so much disaffected her father that, taking them from
his hands with one knee nearly upon the ground, she had said that her
birth ill-fitted her to eat these princely viands, and she had placed
them on a ledge of her writing-pulpit. Heaving a heavy sigh, he
glanced at her book and said that he would not have her spoil her eyes
with too much of study; let her bid Lady Katharine to read and write
for her.

'She will have greater need of her eyes than ever I of mine,' Mary
answered with her passionless voice.

'I will not have you spoil your eyes,' he said heavily, and she gave
him back the reply:

'My eyes are your Highness'.'

He made with his shoulders a slow movement of exasperation, and,
turning to Katharine Howard, he began once more to talk of the Islands
of the Blest. He was dressed all in black furs that day, so that his
face appeared less pallid than when he had worn scarlet, and it seemed
to her suddenly that he was a very pitiful man--a man who could do
nothing; and one who, as Throckmorton had said, was nothing but a
doubt. There beside him, between the two of them, stood his
daughter--pale, straight, silent, her hands clasped before her. And
her father had come to placate her. He had brought her cates to eat,
or he would have beaten her into loving him. Yet Mary of England stood
as rigid as a knife-blade; you could move her neither by love nor by
threats. This man had sinned against this daughter; here he was
brought up against an implacability. He was omnipotent in everything
else; this was his Pillars of Hercules. So she exerted herself to be
pleasant with him, and at one moment of the afternoon he stretched out
a great hand to the cinnamon cakes and placed one in his own mouth. He
sat still, and, his great jaws moving slowly, he said that he scarcely
doubted that, if he himself could set sail with a great armada and
many men, he should find a calm region of tranquil husbandry and a
pure faith.

'It might be found,' he said; then he sighed heavily, and, looking
earnestly at her, brushed the crumbs from the furs about his neck.

'One day, doubtless, your Highness shall find them,' Katharine
answered, 'if your Highness shall apply yourself