ability she had detected in him, that had made him so responsive to her caprices, would undo him here. His was not the stuff that stood out against tempest, she felt, and was full of rage towards him that his nature was not as hardy as her own.

Helen voiced her own thought. "You should have been the man," she murmured.

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"We are indeed undone - this is the end," the girl thought with whitening lips. Go on," she said aloud. 66 Was there more talk?"

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Aye, talk enough. Percy was charged that he resort no more unto thy company as he would abide the king's indignation ... so thereupon he wrote that letter which I had no leisure to get to thee until the mass to-day." Has his father yet come?

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The noble earl came at once and was long closeted with Cardinal Wolsey. And then he came out with a glass of wine in his hand and sat down on a bench which was at the end of the gallery for the use of serving men —and before us all he rated his son who stood there, cap in hand. 'Son,' he said, 'Thou hast been and always wast a proud, unthinking and licentious waster, and what comfort or pleasure shall I conceive of thee, that thus without discretion, hast misused thyself, having neither regard unto me, thy natural father, nor the king, thy sovereign lord, nor to the weal of thine own estate, but hast unadvisedly assured thyself unto her, with whom the king is with thee highly displeased, whose displeasure is intolerable for any subject to bear. His indignation were able to ruin me and my posterity utterly! But considering the lightness of thy head and the willful qualities of thy person, being a singular good lord and favorable prince, and as my Lord Cardinal does clearly excuse thee in thy light act'—the little page

was rolling off the long sentences with unction — he doth lament thy folly rather than malign thee for the same. Pray God this be a sufficient admonition for thee to use thyself more wisely!' he said, and tossed off the wine and scowled round on us all and then went on to say that he did not need to make Percy his heir, as he had other boys, and he threatened to choose the most promising of these for his successor and he rolled his eyes round on us and bade us mark his words and be not sparing in telling his son of his faults."

"You are a glib parrot, Master Wygant," said Anne, and tucked a coin into his hand. "You have dealt well with big words - some day it may hap their meaning will come clearer to you. Is there no more?"

"Nay." With a bow he dropped the coin in his satin pocket. "That is all. I gave it as it was I can remember a phrase as long as the best of them, and as for meanings what is there that I do not know? Percy will go from court, it is said in our household, with his father in a day or two, and till then he dare not resort here. I have lingered over long now. Farewell, mistresses both."

“I, too, must be making my excuses," said Anne. think I shall not stay here longer."

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Her Highness's manner was not over smooth to you this evening," cautioned Helen. "It bodes you no good."

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Nor does any other sign that I can read," Anne flung back. And I care not a whit for them all!" When she had gained the long corridor, she did not seek at once the seclusion of her room, but made a wary way down a narrow flight to another corridor from which opened a tiny balcony. She stepped out on it and stood looking over the rose garden beneath. All the

hope left in her after the interview with the queen was dead. This was the end. There was no appeal. Even had Percy been of another caliber, the matter might not have been bettered. The thing might have been made to cost him his head.

Not that the king was so hopelessly displeased; this talk of Henry's will was, she felt, but a cloak for the cardinal's designs. Wolsey's was the hand that had struck down her happiness. The girl seethed with hot, ineffectual rage against him, all the bitterer for its impotence. He was treading her coolly underfoot for a political scheme that was a small thing, too, to him, but my Lord Privy-Seal did not permit even his small concerns to go astray. If his interference had been a matter of jealousy or revenge, Anne, curiously enough, could have felt it less of an outrage, for jealousy and revenge are warm human passions that strike mercilessly in selfdefense, but this cold arrogance that treated her merely as a wooden pawn to be moved hither and yon quickened her to the fiercest resentment her fiery little heart had ever thrilled with.

The moon slipped out from under a cloud and sent its soft light streaming into the garden's enclosure, making it a fairyland of ethereal light and mysterious shade. It slipped through the swaying leaves of the trees to weave fantastic, changing patterns on the grass about them, it trembled airily on the budding roses and ran, like a silver river, down the wide, box-bordered paths, to flood with its radiance the marble shaft of an old sundial in the garden's center.

It was just such a night as the one when she had last met Percy, and under all the fierce surge of her anger came stealing the pain of the nevermore. Nevermore would they meet there-it might be they would never

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