"She would not obey the Queen?"

"She could not obey those whom the Queen favoured. Then the tyranny that
broke her heart--"

The Queen interrupted her.

"In very truth, but 'tis not in France alone that Queen's favourites
grasp the sceptre and speak the word. Hath a Queen a thousand eyes--can
she know truth where most dissemble?"

"There was a man--he could not know there was one true woman there, who
for her daughter's sake, for her desired advancement, and because she was
cousin of Passy, who urged it, lived that starved life; this man, this
prince, drew round her feet snares, set pit-falls for her while my father
was sent upon a mission. Steadfast she kept her soul unspotted; but it
wore away her life. The Queen would not permit return to Rouen--who can
tell what tale was told her by one whom she foiled? And so she stayed.
In this slow, savage persecution, when she was like a bird that, thinking
it is free, flieth against the window-pane and falleth back beaten, so
did she stay, and none could save her. To cry out, to throw herself upon
the spears, would have been ruin of herself, her husband and her child;
and for these she lived."

Elizabeth's eyes had kindled. Perhaps never in her life had the life at
Court been so exposed to her. The simple words, meant but to convey the
story, and with no thought behind, had thrown a light on her own Court,
on her own position. Adept in weaving a sinuous course in her policy,
in making mazes for others to tread, the mazes which they in turn