'Cousin of Winchester,' the King called, 'bide where you be.' He had the air of a man hardly intent on what the spy could say. He had already made up his mind as to what he himself was to say to Katharine. 'Sir,' Throckmorton said, 'this lady loves you well, and most well she loveth your Highness' daughter. Most well, therefore, doth she hate Privy Seal. I, as your Highness knoweth, have for long well loved Privy Seal. Now I love others better--the common weal and your great and beneficent Highness. As I have told your Highness, this Lady Katharine hath laboured very heartily to bring the Lady Mary to love you. But that might not be. Now, your Highness being minded to give to these your happy realms a lasting peace, was intent that the Lady Mary should write a letter, very urgently, to your Highness' foes urging them to make a truce with this realm, so that your Highness might cast out certain evil men and then better purge this realm of certain false doctrines.' Amazement, that was almost a horror, made Katharine open wide the two hands that hung at her side. 'You!' she cried to the King. '_You_ would have that letter written?' He looked at her with a heavy astonishment. 'Wherefore not?' he asked. 'My God! my God!' she said. 'And I have suffered!' Her first feeling of horror at this endless plot hardly gave way to relief. She had been used as a tool; she had done the work. But she had been betrayed. 'Aye, would I have the letter written,' the King said. 'What could better serve my turn? Would I not have mine enemies stay their arming against me?' 'Then I have written your letter,' she said bitterly. 'That is why I should be gaoled.' The King's look of heavy astonishment did not leave him. 'Why, sweetheart, shalt be made a countess,' he said. 'Y' have done more in this than I or any man could do with my daughter.' 'Wherefore, then, should this man have gaoled me?' Katharine asked. The King turned his heavy gaze upon Throckmorton. The big man's eyes had a sunny and devious smile. 'Sir,' he said, 'this is a subtle conceit of mine, since I am a subtle man. If I am set a task I do it ever in mine own way. Here there was a task.... 'Pray you let me sit upon the floor!' he craved. 'My legs begin to fail.' The King made a small motion with his hand, and the great man, letting himself down by one hand against the arras, leaned back his head and stretched his long legs half across the corridor. 'In ten minutes Privy Seal shall be here with the letter,' he said. 'My head swims, but I will be brief.' He closed his eyes and passed his hand across his forehead. 'I do a task ever in mine own way,' he began again. 'Here am I. Here is Privy Seal. Your Highness is minded to know what passes in the mind of Privy Seal. Well: I am Privy Seal's servant. Now, if I am to come at the mind of Privy Seal, I must serve him well. In this thing I might seem to serve him main well. Listen....' He cleared his throat and then spoke again.