whole barrack out to arrest us. There
is no way in which you can offend the noble and independent Briton more
deeply than by treating lightly his worship of royalty, dead or alive,
and we would probably be held for committing _lese majeste_ by getting
ourselves locked up with the numerous relicts of Henry the Eighth. But
if we wait until morning we can run good chances of slipping out
unperceived with the first crowd of tourists."

"I feel just like the little princes in the Tower, or Queen Mary or
Charlotte Corday," murmured Peggy in ecstatic historical confusion, "or
somebody noble and romantic and beheaded. I think I shall play at being
Queen Mary. I once learned a piece about her. It was very sad, but I
always stuck at the fifth line and had to sit down. Since we have to
stay here till morning we might as well amuse ourselves and you may be
Rizzio."

"Who was he?" asked her companion sceptically, "sounds like one of those
Italian fellows."

"He was Queen Mary's chaperon," Peggy explained vaguely, "and he sang
her love songs."

"Good," said the voice agreeably.

"Can't you think of something else for me?" said the unseen, gloomily
appalled by the prospect of having doughnut recipes pronounced over his
remains.

"How would you like to be Darnley?" said Peggy. "He was her husband."
"I'll be Darnley," came from the darkness so decidedly that Peggy
jumped.

"You have to get blown-up right off," she hastened to add. "Darnley
did."

"Oh he did, did he?" the voice spoke with deeper gloom.

"Queen Mary did it," added Peggy.

"Well, even in the Dark Ages matrimony seems to have given your sex the
same privileges," philosophized her companion cynically.

"How mean!" said Peggy coldly, "I shall play at being Elizabeth all
alone."

"It wouldn't suit you," said her discarded leading man, "not with your
voice."

"Why not?" said Peggy.

"Because it's not hard and cold and metallic enough. Because it has too
much womanly sweetness in it and not enough harsh masculinity."

"What a good dramatic critic you would make!" said Peggy a little
spitefully, "and since you are reading voices I can tell quite well by
yours that you are fat and red faced."

The man laughed.

"And by the same token you are all sweetness and blue eyes and dearness
and dimples," he punished her. Then the banter in his tones died
suddenly out.

"There's something I want to tell you," he said abruptly, with a
movement that seemed in the d