Queen's eye, and gave her a meaning look.

De la Foret saw the look and knew his enemy, but he did not quail. "Bold
only by your high Majesty's faith, indeed," he answered the Queen, with
harmless guile.

Elizabeth smiled. She loved such flattering speech from a strong man.
It touched a chord in her deeper than that under Leicester's finger.
Leicester's impatience only made her more self-willed on the instant.

"You speak with the trumpet note, Monsieur," she said to De la Foret.
"We will prove you. You shall have a company in my Lord Leicester's army
here, and we will send you upon some service worthy of your fame."

"I crave your Majesty's pardon, but I cannot do it," was De la Foret's
instant reply. "I have sworn that I will lift my sword in one cause
only, and to that I must stand. And more--the widow of my dead chief,
Gabriel de Montgomery, is set down in this land unsheltered and alone.
I have sworn to one who loves her, and for my dead chief's sake, that I
will serve her and be near her until better days be come and she may
return in quietness to France. In exile we few stricken folk must stand
together, your august Majesty."

Elizabeth's eye flashed up. She was impatient of refusal of her favour.
She was also a woman, and that De la Foret should flaunt his devotion to
another woman was little to her liking. The woman in her, which had
never been blessed with a noble love, was roused. The sourness of a
childless, uncompanionable life was stronger for the moment than her
strong mind and sense.