hy, nothing save the wind."

"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with
you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and various imprecations!
But I, too, grow cowardly, it maybe-- Nay, I know," she said, and in a
resonant voice, "that I am by this mistress of broad England, until my
son--my own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund--knows
me for what I am. For I have heard-- Coward! O beautiful sleek
coward!" the Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I
was but your plaything!"

"Madame Ysabeau--!" the girl stammered, and ran toward her, for the
girl had risen, and she was terrified.

"To bed!" said Ysabeau; "and put out the lights lest he come presently.
Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night
approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him
there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very
terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but
him--and in that instant I will die. Meantime I rule, until my son
attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and
so helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly,
and save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair--
But I must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders
matters very shrewdly, my Rosamund."

And timidly the girl touched one shoulder. "In part, I understand,
madame and Queen."

"You understand nothing," said Ysabeau; "how should you understand
whose breasts are yet so tiny? Nay, put out the light! though I dread
the darkness, Rosamund--For they say that hell is poorly lighted--and
they say--" Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Herself blew out each lamp.

"We know this Gregory Darrell," the Queen said in the darkness, and
aloud, "ay, to the marrow we know him, however steadfastly we blink,
and we know the present turmoil of his soul; and in common-sense what
chance have you of victory?"

"None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. For man is a
being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his
life here but one unending warfare between that which is divine in him
and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of
the cruel tourney. Always his judgment misleads the man, and his
faculties allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity. His
senses raise a mist about his goings, and th