'Why,' she said to her maid, 'when you have unlaced me you may go, or you will not love my service that keeps you so late.'
Mary Trelyon cast her eyes on the ground, and said that it was such pleasure to attend her mistress, that not willingly would she give up that discoiffing, undoing of hair, and all the rest, for long she had desired to have the handling of these precious things and costly garments.
'No, you shall get you gone,' the Queen said, 'for I will not have you, sweetheart, be red-lidded in the morning with this long watching, for to-morrow the King comes, and I will have him see my women comely and fair, though in your love you will not care for yourselves.'
Standing before her mirror, where there burned in silver dishes four tall candles with perfumed wicks, Katharine offered her back to the loosening fingers of this girl.
'I would not have you to think,' she said, 'that I am always thus late and a gadabout. But this day'—the Queen's eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were red with exaltation—'this day and this night are one that shall be marked with red stones in the calendar of England, and late have I travailed so to make them be.'
The girl was very black-avised, and her face beneath her grey hood—for the Queen's maids were all in grey, with crowned roses, the device that the King had given her at their wedding, worked in red silk on each shoulder—her face beneath her grey hood was the clear shape of the thin end of an egg. She worked at the unlacing of the Queen's gown, so that she at last must kneel down to it.
Having finished, she remained upon her knees, but she twisted her fingers in her skirt as if she were bashful, yet her face was perturbed with red flushes on the dark cheeks.
The Queen, feeling that she knelt there upon her loosened gown and did not get her gone, said—
'Anan?'
'Please you let me stay,' the girl said; but Katharine answered—