'I will save of my own food,' she answered simply.
'Till your bones stick through your skin!' Mary sneered. 'See you, do you know one man you could trust?'
The shadow fell the more deeply upon Katharine, because her cousin—as she remembered every day—the one man that she could trust, was in Calais town.
'I know of two women,' she said; 'my maid Margot and Cicely Elliott.'
Mary of England reflected for a long time. Her eyes sunk deep in her head, grey and baleful, had the look of her father's.
'Cicely Elliott is too well known for my woman,' she said. 'Thy maid Margot is a great lump, too. Hath she no lover?'
The magister was in Paris.
'But a brother she hath,' Katharine said; 'one set upon advancement.'
Mary said moodily:
'Advancement, then, may be in this. God knoweth his own good time. But you might tell him; or it were better you should bid her tell him.... In short words, and fur ... wait.'