Amazement, that was almost a horror, made Katharine open wide the two hands that hung at her side.
'You!' she cried to the King. 'You would have that letter written?'
He looked at her with a heavy astonishment.
'Wherefore not?' he asked.
'My God! my God!' she said. 'And I have suffered!'
Her first feeling of horror at this endless plot hardly gave way to relief. She had been used as a tool; she had done the work. But she had been betrayed.
'Aye, would I have the letter written,' the King said. 'What could better serve my turn? Would I not have mine enemies stay their arming against me?'
'Then I have written your letter,' she said bitterly. 'That is why I should be gaoled.'
The King's look of heavy astonishment did not leave him.
'Why, sweetheart, shalt be made a countess,' he said. 'Y' have done more in this than I or any man could do with my daughter.'