He said suddenly, 'Ah!' a little grunt of satisfaction. His fingers tapping gently made what seemed a stone of the wall quiver and let drop small flakes of plaster. He turned gravely upon Katharine:
'I do not ask what you spoke of with that worshipful swordsman,' he said. 'But your servitor is gone to tell upon you. A stone is gone from here and there is his ear-hole, like a drum of canvas.'
Katharine said swiftly:
'Take, then, a letter for me—to the Bishop of Winchester!'
He started back with a little exaggerated pantomime of horror.
'Must I go into your plots?' he asked, blinking and amused, as if he had expected the errand.
She said urgently:
'I would have you tell me what Englishman now wears a red hat and is like to be in Paris. I am very ignorant in these matters.'
'Then meddle not in them,' he said, 'for that man is even Cardinal Pole; one that the King's Highness would very willingly know to be dead.'
'God forbid that my cousin should murder a Prince of the Church, and be slain in that quarrel,' she answered.