ds must thank you for better housing,'
Mary answered. 'It is certain that my father had never brought me from
that well at Isleworth, had it not been that he desireth converse with
thee at his ease.'

Katharine's lips parted with a hot anger, but before she could speak
the bitter girl said calmly:

'Oh, I have not said thou art his leman. I know my father. His blood
is not hot--but his ears crave tickling. Tickle them whilst thou
mayest. Have I stayed thee? Have I sent thee from my room when he did
come?'

Katharine cast back the purple hood from over her forehead, she
brushed her hand across her brow, and made herself calm.

'This is a trifling folly,' she said. 'In two words: will your
Highness write me this letter?'

'Then, in four words,' Mary answered, 'my Highness cares not.'

The mobile brows above Katharine's blue eyes made a hard straight
line.

'An you will not,' she brought out, 'I will leave your Highness'
service. I will get me away to Calais, where my father is.'

'Why, you will never do that,' the Lady Mary said; 'you have tasted
blood here.'

Katharine hung her head and meditated for a space.

'No, before God,' she said earnestly, 'I think you judge me wrong. I
think I am not as you think me. I think that I do seek no ends of my
own.'

The Lady Mary raised her eyebrows and snickered ironically.

'But of this I am very certain,' Katharine said. She spoke more
earnestly, seeming to plead: 'If I thought that I were grown a
self-seeker, by Mars who changed Alectryon to a cock, and by Pallas
Athene who changed Arachne to a spider--if I were so changed, I would
get me gone from this place. But here is a thing that I may do. If you
will aid me to do it I will stay. If you will not I will get me gone.'

'Good wench,' Mary answered, 'let us say for the sake of peace that
thou art honest.... Yet I have sworn by other gods than thine that
never will I do aught that shall be of aid, comfort or succour to my
father's cause.'

'Take back your oaths!' Katharine cried.

'For thee!' Mary said. 'Wench, thou hast brought me food: thou hast
served me in the matter of letters. I might only with great trouble
get another so to serve me. But, by Mars and Pallas and all the
constellation of the deities, thou mightest get thee to Hell's flames
or ever I would take back an oath.'

'Oh, madness,' Katharine cried out. 'Oh, mad frenzy of one whom the
gods would destroy.' Three times before she had reined in her