eave to retire, sir.' Madame hereupon waved her
people away, and went on waving long after they had gone. Thus she was
alone with her future lord. There was the wreck of fine beauty about her
drawn race, beauty of the black-and-white, sheeted sort; but she looked
as if she walked with ghosts. Richard was very gentle with her. He drew
near, saying, 'I grieve to see you thus, Madame'; but she stopped him
with a question--

'They seek to have you marry me?'

He smiled: 'Our masters desire it, Madame.'

'Are you very sure of that?'

'I am here,' he explained, 'because I am so sure.'

'And you desire--'

'I, Madame,' he said quickly and shortly, 'desire two things--the good
of my country and your good. If I desire anything else, God knows it is
to keep my promise.'

'What is your promise?'

'Madame,' said Richard, 'I bear the Cross on my shoulder, as you see.'

'Why,' she said, fearfully regarding it, 'that is God's work!'

She began to walk about the room quickly, and to talk to herself. He
could not catch properly what she said. Religion came into it, and a
question of time. 'Now it should be done, now it should be done!' and
then, 'Hear, O thou Shepherd of Israel!' and then with a wild look into
Richard's face--'That was a strange thing to do to a lady. They can
never lay that to me!' Afterwards she began to wring her hands, with a
cry of 'Fie, poison, poison, poison!' looking at Richard all the time.

'This poor lady,' he told himself, 'is possessed by a devil, therefore
no wife for me, who have devil enough and to spare.'

'What ails you, Madame?' he asked her. 'Tell me your grief, and upon my
life I will amend it if I can.'

'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