'Why, I think Privy Seal had no such vain imagination,' Katharine answered submissively. She would have laughed that the magister's insane babblings should have raised such a coil; but Gardiner was a man esteemed very saintly, and she kept her eyes on the floor.
'Give thou ear to no doctrines of Privy Seal's,' he answered swiftly. 'Thy soul should burn: I will curse thee. If the King shall offer thee favours for thy friends come thou to me for spiritual guidance.'
She opened amazed and candid eyes upon him.
'But this is a folly,' she said. 'A King may regard one for a minute, then it is past. Privy Seal would not bring me up against the King.'
He flashed his gloomy blue eyes at her, suspecting her, and still threatening.
'I know how Privy Seal will plot,' he said passionately. 'Having failed with one woman he will bring another.'
He clenched his hands angrily and unclenched them: the wind moaned for a moment among the chimney stacks.
'So it is!' he cried, from deep down in his chest. 'If it were not so, how is there all this clamour about his Highness and a woman?'
'Most Reverend,' she said, 'there is no end to the inventions of Magister Udal.'
'There is none to the machinations of the fiend, and Udal is of his councils,' he said. 'Be careful, I tell you, for your soul's sake. Cromwell shall come to you offering you great bribes. Have a care I say!'