have long urged me, Rosamund, to a deed which by one
stroke would make me mistress of these islands. To-day I looked on
Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in love--and I had but to
crush a lewd soft worm to come to him. Eh, and I was tempted--!"

The girl said: "Let us grant that Gregory loves you very greatly, and me
just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a cushioned infamy, a
colorful and brief delirium, and afterward demolishment of soul and
body; I offer him contentment and a level life, made up of small events,
it may be, and lacking both in abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love
a flame wherein the lover's soul must be purified; it is a flame which
assays high queens just as it does their servants: and thus, madame, to
judge between us I dare summon you." "Child, child!" the Queen said,
tenderly, and with a smile, "you are brave; and in your fashion you are
wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I was in heart and soul
and body all that you are to-day; and now I am Queen Ysabeau--Did you in
truth hear nothing, Rosamund?"

"Why, nothing save the wind."

"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with
you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and imprecations! But I,
too, grow cowardly, it may be--Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant
voice, "that by this I am mistress of broad England, until my son--my
own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund--knows me for
what I am. For I have heard--Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!" the
Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I was but your
plaything!"

"Madame Ysabeau--!" the girl answered vaguely, for she was puzzled and
was almost frightened by the other's strange talk.

"To bed!" said Ysabeau; "and put out the lights lest he come presently.
Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night
approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him
there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very
terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but
him,--and in that instant I shall die. Meantime I rule, until my son
attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so
helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, and
save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair--But I
must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders matters
very shrewdly, my Rosamund.