is it proven the Queen's business means more to you than I do. Yes,
certainly it is just as I said, George."

He observed, unruffled: "My dear, I scent unreason. This is a high
matter. If the French King compounds with Rome, it means war for
Protestant England. Even you must see that."

She replied, sadly: "Yes, even I! oh, certainly, my lord, even a
half-witted child of seventeen can perceive as much as that."

"I was not speaking of half-witted persons, as I remember. Well, it
chances that I am honoured by the friendship of our gallant Béarnais,
and am supposed to have some claim upon him, thanks to my good fortune
last year in saving his life from the assassin Barrière. It chances that
I may perhaps become, under providence, the instrument of preserving my
fellow countrymen from much grief and trumpet-sounding and
throat-cutting. Instead of pursuing that chance, two weeks ago--as was
my duty--I have dangled at your apron-strings, in the vain hope of
softening the most variable and hardest heart in the world. Now,
clearly, I have not the right to do that any longer."

She admired the ennobled, the slightly rapt look which, she knew,
denoted that George Bulmer was doing his duty as he saw it, even in her
disappointment. "No, you have not the right. You are wedded to your
state-craft, to your patriotism, to your self-advancement, or christen
it what you will. You are wedded, at all events, to your man's business.
You have not time for such trifles as giving a maid that foolish and
lovely sort of wooing to which every maid looks forward in her heart of
hearts. Indeed, when you married the first time it was a kind of
infidelity; and I am certain that poor dear mouse-like Mary must have