ort.

His white sleeves made a shivering sound, the fur that fell round his
neck was displaced on one shoulder. His large mouth was open with
panic, his lips trembled, and his good-natured and narrow eyes seemed
about to drop tears.

'Your Grace knoweth well what passed to-night at Rochester,' Cromwell
said. He clapped his hands for a man to snuff the candles. 'You have
the common report.'

'Ah, is it even true?' The Archbishop felt a last hope die, and he
choked in his throat. Cromwell watched the man at the candles and
said:

'Your Grace hath a new riding mule. I pray it may cease to affright
you.'

'Why?' he said, as the man went. 'The King's Highness went even to
Rochester, disguised, since it was his good pleasure, as a French
lord. You have seen the lady. So his Highness was seized with a make
of palsy. He cursed to his barge. I know no more than that.'

'And now they sit in the council.'

'It seems,' Cromwell said.

'Ah, dear God have mercy.'

The Archbishop's thin hands wavered before the crucifix on his breast,
and made the sign of the cross.

The very faces of his enemies seemed visible to him. He saw Gardiner,
of Winchester, with his snake's eyes under the flat cap, and the Duke
of Norfolk with his eyes malignant in a long, yellow face. He had a
vision of the King, a huge red lump beneath the high dais at the head
of the Council table, his face suffused with blood, his cheeks
quivering.

He wrung his hands and wondered if at Smithfield the Lutherans would
pray for him, or curse him for having been lukewarm.

'Why, goodman gossip,' Cromwell said compassionately, 'we have been
nearer death ten times.' He uttered his inmost thoughts out of
pity:--All this he had awaited. The King's Highness by the report of
his painters, his ambassadors, his spies--they were all in the pay of
Cromwell--had awaited a lady of modest demeanour, a coy habit, and a
great and placid fairness. 'I had warned the Almains at Rochester to
attire her against our coming. But she slobbered with ecstasy and
slipped sideways, aiming at a courtesy. Therefore the King was hot
with new anger and disgust.'

'You and I are undone.' Cranmer was passive with despair.

'He is very seldom an hour of one mind,' Cromwell answered. 'Unless in
that hour those you wot of shall work upon him, it will go well with
us.'

'They shall. They shall.'

'I wait to see.'

There seemed to Cranmer something horrible in this impassivity. He
wish