ity to resent his borrowed credit,
without the fortitude to endure it manfully. And the hateful comparison
struck him nearer home. Sapt would tell him bluntly that Rudolf did this
or that, set this precedent or that, laid down this or the other policy,
and that the king could do no better than follow in Rudolf's steps. Mr.
Rassendyll's name seldom passed his wife's lips, but when she spoke of
him it was as one speaks of a great man who is dead, belittling all
the living by the shadow of his name. I do not believe that the king
discerned that truth which his wife spent her days in hiding from him;
yet he was uneasy if Rudolf's name were mentioned by Sapt or myself, and
from the queen's mouth he could not bear it. I have seen him fall into
fits of passion on the mere sound of it; for he lost control of himself
on what seemed slight provocation.

Moved by this disquieting jealousy, he sought continually to exact from
the queen proofs of love and care beyond what most husbands can boast
of, or, in my humble judgment, make good their right to, always asking
of her what in his heart he feared was not hers to give. Much she did
in pity and in duty; but in some moments, being but human and herself a
woman of high temper, she failed; then the slight rebuff or involuntary
coldness was magnified by a sick man's fancy into great offence or
studied insult, and nothing that she could do would atone for it. Thus
they, who had never in truth come together, drifted yet further apart;
he was alone in his sickness and suspicion, she in her sorrows and
her memories. There was no child to bridge the gulf between them, and
although she was his queen and his wife, she grew almost a stranger to
him. So he seemed to will that it should be.

Thus, worse than widowed, she lived for three years; and once only in
each year she sent three words to the man she loved, and received from
him three words in answer. Then her strength failed her. A pitiful scene
had occurred in which the king peevishly upbraided her in regard to some
trivial matter--the occasion escapes my memory--speaking to her before
others words that even alone she could not have listened to with
dignity. I was there, and Sapt; the colonel's small eyes had gleamed in
anger. "I should like to shut his mouth for him," I heard him mutter,
for the king's waywardness had well-nigh worn out even his devotion. The
thing, of which I will say no more, happened a day or two before I
was to set