'I do think upon it,' the King said.
'You are better at it than I,' she answered.
Culpepper stood there at gaze, as if he were a corpse about which they talked. But the speaking of the Queen to another man excited him to gurgle and snarl in his throat like an ape. Then another mood coming into the channels of his brain—
'It was the King my cousin Kate did marry. This then is the Queen; I had pacted with myself to forget this Queen.' He spoke straight out before him with the echo of thoughts that he had had during his exile.
'Ho!' the King said and smote his thigh. 'It is plain what to do,' and in spite of his scarlet and his bulk he had the air of a heavy but very cunning peasant. He reflected for a little more.
'It fits very well,' he brought out. 'This man must be richly rewarded.'
'Why,' Katharine said; 'I had nigh strangled him. It makes me tremble to think how nigh I had strangled him. I would well he were rewarded.'
The King considered his wife's cousin.
'Sirrah,' he said, 'we believe that thou canst not kneel, or kneeling, couldst not well again arise.'
Culpepper regarded him with wide, blue, and uncomprehending eyes.