Far from growing weaker, however, Henry's passion grew as Anne's virtue became more rigid. She had not always been so austere, for gossip had already been busy with her good name. Percy and Sir Thomas Wyatt had both been her lovers, and with either or both of them she had in some way compromised herself.[54] But she played her game cleverly, for the stake was a big one, and her fascination must have been great. She was often away from Court, feigning to prefer the rural delights of Hever to the splendours of Greenwich or Richmond, or offended at the significant tittle-tattle about herself and the King. She was thus absent when in July 1527 Wolsey had gone to France, but took care to keep herself in Henry's memory by sending him a splendid jewel of gold and diamonds representing a damsel in a boat on a troubled sea. The lovesick King replied in the first of those extraordinary love-letters of his which have so often been printed. "Henceforward," he says, "my heart shall be devoted to you only. I wish my body also could be. God can do it if He pleases, to whom I pray once a day that it may be, and hope at length to be heard:" and he signs _Escripte de la main du secretaire, que en coeur, corps, et volonté, est vostre loiall et plus assuré serviteure, H. (autre coeur ne cherche) R._ Soon afterwards, when Wolsey was well on his way, the King writes to his lady-love again. "The time seems so long since I heard of your good health and of you that I send the bearer to be better ascertained of your health and your purpose: for since my last parting from you I have been told you have quite abandoned the intention of coming to Court, either with your mother or otherwise. If so I cannot wonder sufficiently; for I have committed no offence against you, and it is very little return for the great love I bear you to deny me the presence of the woman I esteem most of all the world. If you love me, as I hope you do, our separation should be painful to you. I trust your absence is not wilful; for if so I can but lament my ill fortune and by degrees abate my great folly."[55] This was the tone to bring Anne to her lover again, and before many days were over they were together, and in Wolsey's absence the marriage rumours spread apace.