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"I wish I thought it. But we've tried a' dunnamany matches for her and all have failed. Why won't you have her, Kit?"

Kit laughed, and began another tune.

"Why won't you have her?" whispered Lady Elisabeth.

"You know why I will not."

"She's not so wild but that her husband could tame her; it is having gone husbandless so long that hath made her a wildcat. And as for her religion, tell me not, Kit, that if you had a wife you couldn't make her a Protestant in a night's love."

The unexpected end of the tune again left her words hanging defenceless in silence.

". . . a night's love."

". . . Bloomery cinder."

Robert Douce's words came at the same time and covered them, and for once she felt grateful to that dark, mocking man. She had bitten down on her lip in her first fright . . . then she wondered why she had been afraid. She was speaking only of Kate.

Oxenbrigge plucked slowly a slow, sad air of Tye's. "Kit," she repeated, teasing him. "You know that if you made Catherine love you, she would do as you pleased."