“None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast.  For man is a being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his life here is one unending warfare between that which is divine in him and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of the tourney.  Always a man’s judgment misleads him and his faculties allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity.  His senses raise a mist about his goings, and there is not an endowment of the man but in the end plays traitor to his interest, as of God’s wisdom God intends; so that when the man is overthrown, the Eternal Father may, in reason, be neither vexed nor grieved if only the man takes heart to rise again.  And when, betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the allotted battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which God Himself accorded, I think that the Saints hold festival in heaven.”

“A very pretty sermon,” said the Queen.  “Yet I do not think that our Gregory could very long endure a wife given over to such high-minded talking.  He prefers to hear himself do the fine talking.”

Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I believe that neither of these two slept with profundity.

About dawn one of the Queen’s attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, where Ysabeau walked in tranquil converse with Lord Berners.  The old man was in high good-humor.

“My lad,” said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the shoulder, “you have, I do protest, the very phoenix of sisters.  I was never happier.”  And he went away chuckling.

The Queen said in a toneless voice, “We ride for Blackfriars now.”

Darrell responded, “I am content, and ask but leave to speak, briefly, with Dame Rosamund before I die.”

Then the woman came more near to him.  “I am not used to beg, but within this hour you encounter death, and I have loved no man in all my life saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell.  Nor have you loved any person as you loved me once in France.  Oh, to-day, I may speak freely, for with you the doings of that boy and girl are matters overpast.  Yet were it otherwise—­eh, weigh the matter carefully! for I am mistress of England now, and England would I give you, and such love as that slim, white innocence has never dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell—­No, no! ah, Mother of God, not you!” The Queen clapped one hand upon his lips.

“Listen,” she quickly said; “I spoke to tempt you.  But you saw, and you saw clearly, that it was the sickly whim of a wanton, and you never dreamed of yielding, for you love this Rosamund Eastney, and you know me to be vile.  Then have a care of me!  The strange woman am I, of whom we read that her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.  Hoh, many strong men have been slain by me, and in the gray time to come will many others be slain by me, it may be; but never you among them, my Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and who know that I have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against eternity.”