In the great
stillness the Queen waited, still smiling triumphantly, and still he
could find nothing to say, so that a soft titter ran through the
ladies' ranks, whereat the King looked more sour than ever.
"Madam," he began at last. And after that he seemed to be speaking, but
no one heard what he said.
Apparently with the intention of showing that he had nothing more to
say,--and indeed it was of very little importance whether he had or
not,--he waved his hand with a rather awkward gesture and slightly
bowed his head.
"Long live the monk!" said Eleanor, audibly, as she wheeled to the
right to lead her troop away.
Gilbert Warde sat on his horse in the front line of the spectators,
some fifty yards from the King, and near the edge of the lake. As the
Queen cantered along the line, gathering her harvest of admiration in
men's faces, her eyes met the young Englishman's and recognized him. On
his great Norman horse he sat half a head taller than the men on each
side of him, motionless as a statue. Yet his look expressed something
which she had never seen in his face till then; for, being freed from
her immediate influence and at liberty to look on her merely as the
loveliest sight in the world, more strangely beautiful than ever in her
gleaming armour, he had not thought of concealing the pleasure he felt
in watching her.
Not all the cheering of the great army, not all the light in the
thousands of eyes that followed her, could have done more than bring a
faint colour to her face, nor could any man in all that host have found
a word to make her heart beat faster.
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