As she stopped, and, looking him in the eye with an expression inquiring and anxious, opened her lips to speak to him, he made an impatient gesture with his hand, and a dark frown gathered on his brow.
"It is late," said he, hastily, "and we have business of state." Catharine did not venture to speak; she bowed in silence and left the room.

The king watched her with sullen brow and angry looks.

Then he turned round to Gardiner.
"Now," asked he, "what do you think of the queen ?" "I think," said Gardiner, so slowly and so deliberately that each word had time to penetrate the king's sensitive heart like the prick of a needle--"I think that she does not deem them criminals that call the holy book which you have written a work of hell; and that she has a great deal of sympathy for those heretics who will not acknowledge your supremacy." "By the holy mother, I believe she herself would speak thus, and avow herself among my enemies, if she were not my wife!" cried the king, in whose heart rage began already to seethe like lava in a volcano.
"She does it already, although she is your wife, sire! She imagines her exalted position renders her unamenable, and protects her from your righteous wrath; therefore she does what no one else dares do, and speaks what in the mouth of any other would be the blackest treason." "What does she?
and what says she ?" cried the king.

"Do not hesitate to tell me, your highness.

It behooves me well to know what my wife does and says." "Sire, she is not merely the secret patroness of heretics and reformers, but she is also a professor of their faith.