Italian things, and had a large garden at the back on to which looked
the windows of the hall. Supper was brought up almost immediately--a
couple of woodcocks and a salad--and the two sat down, with a pair of
servants in blue and silver to wait on them. Cromwell spoke no more word
of business until the bottle of wine had been set on the table, and the
servants were gone. And then he began again, immediately.

"And what of the country?" he said. "What do they say there?" He took a
peach from the carved roundel in the centre of the table, and seemed
absorbed in its contemplation.

Ralph had had some scruples at first about reporting private
conversations, but Cromwell had quieted them long since, chiefly by the
force of his personality, and partly by the argument that a man's duty
to the State over-rode his duty to his friends, and that since only talk
that was treasonable would be punished, it was simpler to report all
conversations in general that had any suspicious bearing, and that he
himself was most competent to judge whether or no they should be
followed up. Ralph, too, had become completely reassured by now that no
injury would be done to his own status among his friends, since his
master had never yet made direct use of any of his information in such a
manner as that it was necessary for Ralph to appear as a public witness.
And again, too, he had pointed out that the work had to be done, and
that was better for the cause of justice and mercy that it should be
done by conscientious rather than by unscrupulous persons.

He talked to him now very freely about the conversations in his father's
house, knowing that Cromwell did not want more than a general specimen
sketch of public feeling in matters at issue.