"A priest in full orders," objected the King, "of good life and unblemished conversation. Even you, holy Father, so fertile in wise plans, shall scarce, methinks, be able to lay finger on him." "Scantly; without he were excommunicate of heresy at the time this wedding were celebrate." "Which he was not," answered the King rather impatiently. "Would to Saint Edmund he had so been! It were then no marriage." The Archbishop made no reply in words, but drawing towards him a sheet of paper which lay upon the table, he slowly traced upon it a date some two months previous--the date of the Sunday before Constance's marriage. The King watched him in equal silence, with knitted brows and set lips. Then the two conspirators' eyes met. "Could that be done?" asked the royal layman, under his breath. "Is it not done, Sire?" calmly responded the priestly villain, pointing to the paper. The King was silent for a minute; but, unprincipled as he was, his conscience was not quite so seared as that of Arundel. "The end halloweth the means, trow?" he said inquiringly. "All means be holy, Sire, where the end is the glory of God," replied Arundel, with a hypocritical assumption of piety. "And the glory of God is the service and avancement of holy Church." Still Henry's mind misgave him. His conscience appears at times to have tortured him in his later years, and he shrank from burdening it yet further. "Father, if sin be herein, you must bear this burden!" "I have borne heavier," replied Arundel with a cynical smile. And truly, to a man upon whose soul eleven murders lay lightly, an invalidated marriage was likely to be no oppressive weight. "Yet even now," resumed the King, again knitting his brows uneasily, "methinks all hardships be scarce vanished. Our good cousin of Kent is he that should not be turned aside from his quarry [object of pursuit; a hunting phrase] by a brook in his way." "Not if an eagle arose beyond the heron he pursued?" suggested Arundel, significantly. "Ha!" said the King. "He is marvellous taken with beauty," resumed his priestly counsellor. "And the Lady Custance is not the sole woman in the world." "You have some further thought, Father," urged Henry. "Methinks your Grace hath a good friend in the Lord Galeas, Duke of Milan?" "Ay, of olden time," answered the King, with a sigh. Was it caused by the regretful thought that if he could bring back that olden time, when young Henry of Bolingbroke was learning Italian at Milan and Venice, he might be a happier man than now? "He hath sisters, methinks, that bear high fame for fair and lovesome?" "None higher in Christendom." "And the youngest-born, the Lady Lucy, I take it, is yet unwed?" "She is so." "And cometh not behind her sisters for beauty?" "She was but a little child when I was at Milan," said the King; "but I hear tell of her as fairest of all the fair Visconti."