'Why, it signifies,' Katharine said, 'that Messenio did well mark a face. If you read _commetavi_ it should mean that he scratched it with his nails so that it resembled a harrowed field; if _commentavi_, that he bethumped it with his fist so that bruises came out like the stops on a fair writing.' 'It is true that you are a good Latinist,' Mary said expressionlessly. 'Bring me my inkhorn to that window. I will write down your _commentavi_.' Katharine lifted the inkhorn from its hole in the arm of the chair and gracefully followed the stiff and rigid figure into the embrasure of a distant window. Mary bent her head over the book that she held in her hand, and writing in the margin, she uttered: 'Pity that such an excellent Latinist should meddle in matters that nothing concern her.' Katharine held the inkhorn carefully, as if it had been a precious vase. 'If you will bid me do naught but serve you, I will do naught else,' she said. 'I will neither bid thee nor aid thee,' Mary answered. 'The Bishop of Winchester claims thy service. Serve him as thou wilt.' 'I would serve my mistress in serving him,' Katharine said. 'He is a man I love little.' Mary pulled suddenly from her bodice a piece of crumpled parchment that had been torn across. She thrust it into Katharine's free hand. 'Such letters I have had written me by my father's men,' she said. 'If this bishop should come to be my father's man I would take no service from him.' Katharine read on the crumpled parchment such words as: 'Be you dutiful ... I will not protect ... You shall be ruined utterly ... You had better creep underground ... Therefore humble you ...' 'It was Thomas Cromwell wrote that,' the Lady Mary cried. 'My father's man!' 'But if this brewer's son be brought down?' Katharine pleaded. 'Why, I tore his letter across for it is filthy,' Mary said, 'and I keep the halves of his letter that I may remember. If he be brought down, who shall bring his master down that let him write so?' Katharine said: 'If this tempter of the Devil's brood were brought down there should ensue so great an atonement from his sorrowful master whom he deludes....' Mary uttered a 'Tush!' of scorn and impatience. 'This is the babbling of a child. My father is no holy innocent as you and your like feign to believe.' 'Nevertheless I love you most well,' Katharine pleaded. Mary snapped her book to. Her cold tone came back over her heat as the grey clouds of a bitter day shut down again upon a dangerous flicker of lightning. 'Do as you will,' she said, 'only if your head fall I will stir no finger to aid you. Or, if by these plottings my father could be got to send me his men upon their knees and bearing crowns, I would turn my back upon them and say no word.' 'Well, my plottings are like to end full soon,' Katharine said. 'Privy Seal hath sent for me upon no pleasant errand.' Mary said: 'God help you!' with a frigid unconcern, and walked back to her chair. VI