'You cannot,' she said. 'Nothing can mend it.'

'Then, with leave'--he went to the curtains--'I will call your Grace's
people. Our discussions can be later; there is time enough.'

She would have stopped him had she dared, or had the force; but
literally she was spent. There was just time to get the women in before
she tumbled. Richard, in his perplexity, determined to wrangle out the
matter with the King on the morrow, cost what it might. So he did; and
to his high surprise the King reasoned instead of railing. Madame Alois,
he said, was weakly, un-wholesome indeed. In his opinion she wanted,
what all young women want, a husband. She was too much given to the
cloister, she had visions, she was feared to use the discipline, she ate
nothing, was more often on her knees than on her feet. 'All this, my
son,' said King Henry, 'you shall correct at your discretion. Humours,
vapours, qualms, fantasies--pouf! You can blow them away with a kiss.
Have you tried it? No? Too cold? Nay, but you should.' And so on, and so
on. That day, none too soon, the French ambassadors arrived, and
Richard saw the Count of Saint-Pol among them.

He had never liked the Count of Saint-Pol; or perhaps it would be truer
to say that he disliked him more than ordinary. But he belonged to, had
even a tinge of, Jehane; some of her secret fragrance hung about him, he
walked in some ray of her glory. It seemed to Richard, bothered, sick,
fretted, a little disconcerted as he was now, that the Count of
Saint-Pol had an air which none other of this people had. He greeted him
therefore with more than usual affability, very much to Saint-Pol's
concern. Richard observed this, and suddenly remembered that he was
doing the man what the man must certainly believe to be a cruel wrong.
'_Mort de Dieu!_ What am I about?' his heart cried. 'I ought to be