"Ramsay!" she cried impetuously, "I hate this life—why did you all send me to it?"
"Hate it! Why——?"
"Why?" reiterated Hortense. "Why, when a king, who is too busy to sign death-reprieves, may spend the night hunting a single moth from room to room of the palace? Why, when ladies of the court dress in men's clothes to run the streets with the Scowerers? Why, when a duchess must take me every morning to a milliner's shop, where she meets her lover, who is a rope-walker? Why, when our sailors starve unpaid and gold enough lies on the basset-table of a Sunday night to feed the army? Ah, yes!" says Hortense, "why do I hate this life? Why must you and Madame Radisson and Lady Kirke all push me here?"
"Hortense," I broke in, "you were a ward of the crown! What else was there for us to do?"
"Ah, yes!" says Hortense, "what else? You kept your promise, and a ward of the crown must marry whom the king names—"
"Marry?"
"Or—or go to a nunnery abroad."
"A nunnery?"
"Ah, yes!" mocks Hortense, "what else is there to do?"
And at that comes Blood crashing through the brush.