u, Father--all
pictures, dear. Come--" She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared
in the doorway.

"But I do not wish to look at pictures," Charles said, peevishly; "I
wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful daughter, Katharine. You are
never willing to amuse me." He sat down with a whimper and began to
pluck at his dribbling lips.

Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was white. "Now
welcome, sire!" she said. "Welcome, O great conqueror, who in your
hour of triumph can find no nobler recreation than to shame a maid
with her past folly! It was valorously done, sire. See, Father; here
is the King of England come to observe how low we sit that yesterday
were lords of France."

"The King of England!" echoed Charles, and he rose now to his feet. "I
thought we were at war with him. But my memory is treacherous. You
perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my
mind is somewhat preempted. I recall now that you are in treaty for my
daughter's hand. Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but
I suppose--" He paused, as if to regard and hear some invisible
counsellor, and then briskly resumed: "Yes, I suppose policy demands
that she should marry you. We trammelled kings can never go free of
policy--ey, my compere of England? No; it was through policy I wedded
her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in
your ear, son-in-law: Madame Isabeau's soul formerly inhabited a sow,
as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the
influence of the moon drew it hither."

Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes appraised Dame
Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly:

"Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, though by
ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy again,
son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the great
hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten flies--
very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides,--and
afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its
sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!--and
I her father!" The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which
Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his
destroyer's hand, was that of a conspiring child.

"Come, Father," Katharine said. "Come away to bed, dear."

"Hideous basilisk!" he spat at her; "