“When a maid is without father or mother, and away from her rightful guardians, and has presented her such frocks as thou dost wear, ’tis the maid’s duty to find out whence such gorgeous and unmonastic apparel comes.”

“But, Janet, I do know.  The Abbes have made provision for me.  They bade me leave the castle without incumbrance, and the chest was sent for my necessity.  I mean to pay it all back when I return—­or when I send to Lord Cedric.”

“And when will that be, Lambkin?”

“When the King gives me audience.”

“And thou art expecting the Duke of Monmouth to bring the word from Whitehall?”

“He said ’twas his pleasure so to do.”

“Now God pity me this day; I would I had never seen it!”

“Why wearest thou so sorry a face, Janet?”

“For thy too fat zeal.  Is it not enough to make an ingrowing visage?”

“How so?” said Katherine in feigned insouciance.

“A surfeit of good, like a too-full cup, boils over and falls to ill.”

“Then, Janet, surfeit sin ’til it bubbles up, runs over,—­perhaps a better cup to fill.”

“Alack, alas, for youth’s philosophy!”

“At what art thou driving, nurse; thou canst neither affect Shakespeare nor the Bible!”

“Have I not always loved thee, Lambkin; search thy memory; did I ever tell thee lies or use the veil of falsehood to cover from thee that which I would not have thee know?”

“Nay; but thou hast used artifice ’til it is threadbare, and I now behold its naked warp.”

“But hast well served, thou canst not deny.  It has made thee the sweet innocent bud thou art, and we will enshrine its shade, though it hath no soul to join it hereafter, and I will resort to vulgar frankness, employed by the truculent commonplace, and say we live in an age of swaggering, badgering, immoral-begotten, vice-ridden, irreligious decrepitude—­” Katherine made a hissing noise with her teeth, as if she had been suddenly and severely pricked by a pin, then put up her hands and stopped her ears—­this day, Mistress Penwick thou shalt know the character of thy King—­Nay, thou shalt know.  I will tell thee that ’twill poison thy mind of one of so great station—­”

“Wouldst thou assail his morals, Janet?”

“’Tis impossible to assail that a man hath not.”

“Then ’twould be a field for sweet mission to teach him morals.”

“And wouldst thou delegate thyself to such an office?”

“Aye, why not?”

“Because he would steal thy knowledge ere thou hadst found his heart, and thou wouldst find thyself insolvent of virtue.”

“Thou hast overreached artifice, Janet, and gone back to Bible days and corrupted them by borrowing parabolic speech to waste upon deaf-eared seventeenth century maid.”