'God help me!' she said. 'I prayed the King for the life of Privy Seal that was!'
'He would not hear thee,' the Lady Mary said. She looked long upon the Queen's face with unmoved and searching eyes.
'It is a new thing to me,' she said,'to hear that you prayed for Privy Seal's life.'
'Well, I prayed,' Katharine said, 'for I did not think he worked treason against the King.'
The Lady Mary straightened her back where she sat.
'I think I will not show myself less queenly than you,' she said. 'For I be of a royal race. But hear this knight.'
And again she read:
'"I have it from the lips of the cornet that came with this Lascelles to fetch this Mary Lascelles or Hall: I, Throckmorton, a knight, swear that I heard with mine own ears, how for ever as they rode, this Lascelles plied this cornet with questions about your high self. As thus: 'Did you favour any gentleman when you rode out, the cornet being of your guard?' or, 'Had he heard a tale of one Pelham, a knight, of whom you should have taken a kerchief?'—and this, that and the other, for ever, till the cornet spewed at the hearing of him. Now, gracious and most high Sovereign Consort, what is it that this man seeketh?"'
Again the Lady Mary paused to look at the Queen.
'Why,' Katharine said, 'so mine enemies will talk of me. I had been the fool you styled me if I had not awaited it. But——' and she drew up her body highly. 'My life is such and such shall be that none such arrow shall pierce my corslet.'