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."