er moved; but their glances crossed, and for that instant she saw
the face of a man who has just stepped into a quicksand. She trembled,
without knowing why. Then he spoke, composedly, and of trivial matters.

Thus began the Queen's acquaintance with Edward Maudelain. She was by
this time the loneliest woman in the island. Her husband granted her a
bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but desiderated any
appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a certain kinship to the
impeccable loveliness of some female saint in a jaunty tapestry; bright
as ice in sunshine, just so her beauty chilled you, he complained: and
moreover, this daughter of the Caesars had been fetched into England,
chiefly, to breed him children, and this she had never done.
Undoubtedly he had made a bad bargain--he was too easy-going, people
presumed upon it. His barons snatched their cue and esteemed Dame Anne
to be negligible; whereas the clergy, finding that she obstinately read
the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, under the irrelevant plea of not
comprehending Latin, denounced her from their pulpits as a heretic and
as the evil woman prophesied by Ezekiel.

It was the nature of this desolate child to crave affection, as a
necessity almost, and pitifully she tried to purchase it through
almsgiving. In the attempt she could have found no coadjutor more
ready than Edward Maudelain. Giving was with these downright two a
sort of obsession, though always he gave in a half scorn but half
concealed; and presently they could have marshalled an army of
adherents, all in rags, who would cheerfully have been hacked to pieces
for either of the twain, and have praised God at the final gasp for the
privilege. It was perhaps the tragedy of the man's life that he never
suspected this.

Now in and about the Queen's unfrequented rooms the lonely woman and
the priest met daily to discuss now this or that comminuted point of
theology, or now (to cite a single instance) Gammer Tudway's obstinate
sciatica. Considerate persons found something of the pathetic in their
preoccupation by these trifles while, so clamantly, the dissension
between the young King and his uncles gathered to a head: the air was
thick with portents; and was this, then, an appropriate time, the
judicious demanded of high Heaven, for the Queen of fearful England to
concern herself about a peasant's toothache?

Long afterward was Edward Maudelain to remember this brief and tranqu