where the rich greens of a forest were taking shape under her skillful fingers; the ladies about her bent, half squinting in the grudging light, over their work in silence. Conversation immediately after mass was not considered indicative of a proper train of pious reflection. The youngest maid of honor had not taken her place at her frame. She was standing beside it, her eyes on the queen, her hands tensely clinched at her sides as if gripping upon some supreme resolve. Then with a swirling flutter of draperies she moved impetuously forward and fell on one knee at the queen's side.

r

"I crave a moment's hearing of your Majesty," she cried, and the sudden appeal of the young voice vibrated with an indecorous sensation through the calm room.

In surprise Queen Catherine looked down into the excited face of her maid of honor, and there was a brisk rustling of silks as her ladies turned to the strange sight of Anne in petition.

"How now? What have you to ask?" There was scant promise in the queen's tone and in her attitude of suspended industry.

Anne's eyes swept the attentive listeners. "Will your Grace have the goodness to hear me privily?" she besought.

The queen gave a look about the room before which her attendants discreetly lowered their lids.

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Speak out, girl," she commanded.

enough."

"This is privily

Anne swallowed hard. She had no illusion about the queen's feeling for her. Between them had ever rankled the antipathy of alien temperaments, and strong personal pride to which their close association had given a thousand indefinable ways of expression. But she saw no help for herself now except through the queen, and after all

Catherine was a woman and had often been a pitying one to subjects in distress. Perhaps now her pride would be gratified and her spite appeased by such humility of appeal. But it was bitterly hard to speak out and bare a sensitive heart before that curious roomful.

"Your Grace knows," she began desperately, “that in these years at court, since my return from France, I have ever served you with loyalty and devotion. If I have e'er offended it has not been from a wish of my heart's. Let me implore that out of your great charity your Highness will intervene on my poor behalf.

I am in such strait fortune! The Lord Cardinal ”— even through the tone of pleading that name shot a quiver of rancor -"the Lord Cardinal hath forbidden my troth to the Lord Percy of Northumberland."

Catherine's beetling brows contracted sharply. She thrust out her lower lip-an ominous sign. "Thy troth? Percy of Northumberland? What art thou raving about? What art thou to him?"

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Your Majesty, the Lord Percy has honored me with the proposal of his hand. We plighted our troth. And then the Lord Cardinal—”

"Thou hast been having secret love meetings with this Henry Percy?" Clearly the tale had not made a good beginning. Catherine had stern standards for her maids.

“I but talked with him here at times in the chamber while the Lord Cardinal was having audience with your Highness," Anne anxiously protested. "And we are plighted to marry. We waited to implore your Grace's favor until Percy could personally acquaint his father with his hopes." Catherine's expression seemed to imply that these two numbers on the prospective programme would have been better reversed. Anne read this with sinking heart as she hurried on.

"Then as we were waiting there came one that spied on us and hatefully betrayed us to the Lord Cardinal, in whose care and service Northumberland had been placed. And the cardinal then called him to account, who made answer that he wanted nothing so much as to marry me and be released from an old pre-contract that his father had made, three years back, with the father of Lady Mary Talbot. There are contracts made and unmade every day, as your Majesty knows, and the Lady Mary's affections were in no wise touched. But oh, for no reason that any heart can see, the Lord Cardinal forbade our love. He sent for the old Earl of Northumberland to come and oppose young Percy. Oh, your Grace, your Grace, I beg, I implore of your womanly heart to take pity on us and grant us your aid! A word from you to the cardinal, to the king, and we are free to love and marry and without that word we are undone forever. It is so little to you and to us it is all. Surely God will move you to take compassion!"

Her voice rang out through the room unmindful of the listening ladies. She had forgotten their curious eyes and ears; in her passionate need pride and reserve streamed from her like leaves in an autumn gale. She was conscious only of her peril, her fear, and her hope. Through a mist of unaccustomed tears her dark eyes sought the queen's; her lips were quivering, her heart was bounding like a hunted thing's.

Little enough emotion answered her in the queen's reply. "I trust I know my duty to God without your tongue to point it. . . . If the Lord Cardinal forbade, the Lord Cardinal had a good reason."

"Oh, 'twas a reason of hard, unchristian craft!" the girl gave tempestuously back. "He wishes to keep me unmarried that he may be ever dangling the promise of

my hand before my cousin, the son of Sir Piers Butler, to settle with my father the old dispute over the Ormond inheritance. The Butlers give him gifts to bring this to pass must a girl's life wait so on juggling state craft? Oh, your Majesty —”

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"Is that a seemly way to mention the Lord High Cardinal to me, girl?" Anne opened her lips but Catherine's gesture checked her speech. "You are not free, Mistress Anne, to follow with your hand where you have flung your heart. I trust I have an open mind for all who sue but I see in this nothing but the vanity of a froward maid which I have had occasion beforetimes to rebuke. Your queen hath other work than the making you Countess of Northumberland. His Gracious Majesty, the king, hath long destined you for your cousin, Sir James Butler, as a fitting union to end an old family strife. To that end you were recalled from France."

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But that is over three years ago—and still the Lord Cardinal would keep me unwed so as still to hold threat or promise over the Butlers and accept their gifts." Anne's tears were dried by her rising anger and long smothered sense of injustice. "I have been but a pawn in his game. Surely to your Majesty I may seem a woman. Why may I not marry Percy? I am of honorable lineage, the daughter of a knight, and I have brought no stain or tarnish to my name

"I care not to discuss your fair reputation, Mistress Anne."

A faint titter, like the rustling of a spring breeze, flew among the ladies, quickly subdued for fear of the queen's displeasure. But Catherine gave no hint of vexation towards it.

"You are a froward girl to rail at the Lord Cardinal's

policies which are the policies of the king, your master. Would you raise your tongue against him? You have ever been too unlicensed in speech and action, mistress; take heed now and be warned by this mischance which your folly has brought upon you lest worse happen. Percy is contracted to the Lady Mary and you should have known better than to raise your eyes to his. I would do wrong to have that contract broken."

“Oh, your Highness, 'twas but a talk, a promise, between the fathers three years back. Percy and Mary do not love. 'Tis I he chooses and 'tis his happiness that is in your hands with that of mine."

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Percy is a boy and should be finding his happiness in his duty and not in stolen love tokens from silly maids. We will have no French ways here."

The Spanish woman had no love for France and it was Anne's misfortune that she had brought back from that court too much of its charm and freedom to be acceptable.

The girl's whole face was scarlet with distress, but she made one more last essay of humility.

"Ah, if your Majesty would but reflect! We would serve you all our lives in such loving gratitude-"

"Which is, in any case, your duty to your sovereign," Catherine dryly reminded her.

Then as the girl, still on her knee, fixed on her a look of strangely mingled pleading and resentment, "Rise, Mistress Anne," she commanded. "I would do wrong to interfere with the king's plans. Nay, you need speak no more. I know my duty with the aid of Heaven without your voice. I am sorry for your hopes but I cannot help you in this."

Anne rose slowly, her burning eyes never wavering from the queen's face.