anger:
now she stretched out her hands with her habitual gesture of pitiful
despair. Her eyes looked straight before her, and, as she inclined
her knees, the folds of her grey dress bent round her on the floor.

'Here I have pleaded with you, and you have gibed me with the love of
the King. Here I have been earnest with you, and you have mocked. God
help me!' she sobbed, with a catch in her throat. 'Here is rest, peace
and the blessing of God offered to this land. Here is a province that
is offered back to the Mother of God and the dear hosts of heaven.
Here might we bring an erring King back to the right way, a sinful man
back unto his God. But you, for a parcel of wrongs of your own....'

'Now hold thy peace,' Mary said, between anger and irony. 'Here is a
matter of a farthing or two. Be the letter written, and kiss upon it.'

Katharine stayed herself in the tremor of her emotions, and the Lady
Mary said drily:

'Be the letter written. But thou shalt write it. I have sworn that I
will do nothing to give this King ease.'

'But my writing....' Katharine began.

'Thou shalt write,' Mary interrupted her harshly. 'If thou wilt have
this King at peace for a space that Cromwell may fall, why I am at one
with thee. For this King is such a palterer that without this knave at
his back I might have had him down ten years ago. Therefore, thou
shalt write, and I will countersign the words.'

'That were to write thyself,' Katharine said.

'Good wench,' the Lady Mary said. 'I am thy slave: but take what thou
canst get.'

* * * * *

Towards six of the next day young Poins clambered in at Katharine
Howard's window and stood, pale, dripping with rain and his teeth
chattering, between Cicely Elliott and her old knight.

'The letter,' he said. 'They have taken thy letter. My advancement is
at an end!' And he fell upon the floor.

Going jauntily along the Hampton Street, he had been filled, that
afternoon, with visions of advancement. Drifts of rain hid the osiers
across the river and made the mud ooze in over the laces of his
shoes. The tall white and black house, where the Emperor's ambassador
had his lodgings, leaned in all its newness over the path, and the
water from its gutters fell right into the river, making a bridge
above a passer's head. The little cookshop, with its feet, as it were,
in the water, made a small hut nestling down beneath the shadow of the
great house. It was much us