The Queen sat motionless in her purple velvet. She twisted one hand into the chain of the medallion about her throat, and one hand lay open and pale by her side. Margot Poins knelt at her side, her face hidden in the Queen's lap, her two arms stretched out beyond her grey coifed head. For a minute she was silent. Then great sobs shook her so that Katharine swayed upon her seat. From her hidden face there came muffled and indistinguishable words, and at last Katharine said dully-- 'What, child? What, child?' Margot moved her face sideways so that her mouth was towards Katharine. 'You can unmake it! You can unmake the marriage,' she brought out in huge sobs. Katharine said-- 'No! No!' 'You unmade a King's marriage,' Margot wailed. Katharine said-- 'No! No!' She started and uttered the words loudly; she added pitifully, 'You do not understand! You do not understand!' It was the more pitiful in that Margot understood very well. She hid her face again and only sobbed heavily and at long intervals, and then with many sobs at once. The Queen laid her white hand upon the girl's head. Her other still played with the chain. 'Christ be piteous to me,' she said. 'I think it had been better if I had never married the King.' Margot uttered an indistinguishable sound. 'I think it had been better,' the Queen said; 'though I had jeoparded my immortal part.' Margot moved her head up to cry out in her turn-- 'No! No! You may not say it!' Then she dropped her face again. When she heard the King coming back and breathing heavily, she stood up, and with huge tears on her red and crumpled face she looked out upon the fields as if she had never seen them before. An immense sob shook her. The King stamped his foot with rage, and then, because he was soft-hearted to them that he saw in sorrow, he put his hand upon her shoulder. 'Sha't have a better mate,' he uttered. 'Sha't be a knight's dame! There! there!' and he fondled her great back with his hand. Her eyes screwed tightly up, she opened her mouth wide, but no words came out, and suddenly she shook her head as if she had been an enraged child. Her loud cries, shaken out of her with her tears, died away as she went across the terrace, a loud one and then a little echo, a loud one and then two more. 'Before God!' the King said, 'that knave shall eat ten years of prison bread.' His wife looked still over the wooded enclosures, the little stone walls, and the copses. A small cloud had come before the sun, and its shadow was moving leisurely across the ridge where stood the roofless abbey. 'The maid shall have the best man I can give her,' the King said. 'Why, no good man would wed her!' Katharine answered dully. Henry said-- 'Anan?' Then he fingered the dagger on the chain before his chest. 'Why,' he added slowly, 'then the Magister shall die by the rope. It is an offence that can be quitted with death. It is time such a thing were done.'