“O Madame the Virgin!” prayed Miguel de Rueda, “thou that wast once a woman, even as I am now a woman! grant that the man may slay him quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne very quickly, honored Lady, so that my Etienne may die unshamed!”

“I must question, messire,” de Gatinais was saying, “whether you have been well inspired.  Yes, quite frankly, I do await the arrival of her who is your nominal wife; and your intervention at this late stage, I take it, can have no outcome save to render you absurd.  So, come now! be advised by me, messire—­”

Prince Edward said, “I am not here to talk.”

“—­For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary disputation the cutting of one gentleman’s throat by another gentleman is well enough, since the argument is unanswerable.  Yet in this case we have each of us too much to live for; you to govern your reconquered England, and I—­you perceive that I am candid—­to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm.  Now to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me essential; to you she is nothing.”

“She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged,” Prince Edward said, “and to whom, God willing, I mean to make atonement.  Ten years ago they wedded us, willy-nilly, to avert the impending war between Spain and England; to-day El Sabio intends to purchase Germany with her body as the price; you to get Sicily as her husband.  Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be bought and sold like hog’s flesh!  We have other and cleaner customs, we of England.”

“Eh, and who purchased the woman first?” de Gatinais spat at him, viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his air-castle shaken to the corner-stone.

“They wedded me to the child in order that a great war might be averted.  I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that two people suffer inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain.  And still this is my view of the matter.  Yet afterward I failed her.  Love had no clause in our agreement; but I owed her more protection than I have afforded.  England has long been no place for women.  I thought she would comprehend that much.  But I know very little of women.  Battle and death are more wholesome companions, I now perceive, than such folk as you and Alphonso.  Woman is the weaker vessel—­the negligence was mine—­I may not blame her.”  The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance.

On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left hand and his right hand outstretched.  “One and all, we are weaklings in the net of circumstance.  Shall one herring, then, blame his fellow if his fellow jostle him?  We walk as in a mist of error, and Belial is fertile in allurements; yet always it is granted us to behold that sin is sin.  I have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire de Gatinais, more deeply than you have planned to sin through luxury and through ambition.  Let us then cry quits, Messire de Gatinais, and afterward part in peace, and in common repentance.”