It is my
excuse to God and man, before whom you say I am condemned."
The girl roused herself again, and though it was sharp pain to move,
she raised her weight upon her elbow and looked straight into the
Queen's eyes.
"You argue and you make excuses," she said boldly. "I ask for none. I
ask only that you should not take the one happiness I have out of my
life. You say that we are speaking as woman to woman. What right have
you to the man I love? No, do not answer me with another dissertation
on the soul. Woman to woman, tell me what right you have?"
"If he loves me, is that no right?"
"If he loves you? Oh, no! He does not love you yet!"
"He saved me yesterday--not you," answered the Queen, cruelly, and she
remembered his eyes. "Does a man risk his life desperately, as he did,
for the woman he loves, or for another, when both are in like danger?"
"It was not you, it was the Queen he saved. It is right that a loyal
man should save his sovereign first. I do not blame him. I should not
have blamed him had I been more hurt than I am."
"I am not his sovereign, and he is no vassal of mine." Eleanor smiled
coldly. "He is an Englishman."
"You play with words," answered Beatrix, as she would have spoken to an
equal.
"Take care!"
They faced each other, and on the instant the fierce pride of royalty
sprang up, as at an insult. But Beatrix was brave--a sick girl against
the Queen of France.
"If you are not his sovereign, you are not mine," she said.
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