But once I was in heart and soul
and body all that you are to-day; and now I am Queen Ysabeau--Did you in
truth hear nothing, Rosamund?"
"Why, 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 imprecations! But I,
too, grow cowardly, it may be--Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant
voice, "that by this I am 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 answered vaguely, for she was puzzled and
was almost frightened by the other's strange talk.
"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 shall die.
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