She had once more laid her head back on the stone balustrade.
'If thou lovest me....' he whispered. It enraged and confused him to have to speak low. He could not think of any words.
She answered unconcernedly:
'If thou lovest my bones ... they ache and they ache.'
'I have sold farms to buy thee gowns,' he said desperately.
'I never asked it,' she answered coldly.
Henry was saying:
'Ah, Princes take as is brought them by others. Poor men be commonly at their own choice.' His voice had a sort of patient regret. 'Why brought ye not such a wench?'
Cromwell answered that in Lincoln, they said, she had been a coin that would not bear ringing.
'You do not love her house,' the King said. 'Y' had better have brought me such a one.'