Though she expected her, Marie Antoinette started when her visitor was announced.
When they were girls together, at Taverney, they had made a kind of agreement of love and duties exchanged in which the higher personage had always had the advantage.
Nothing annoys rulers so much as senses of obligation, particularly in matters of affection.
While thinking she had reproaches to cast on her friend, the Queen felt under a debt to her.
Andrea was always the same: pure and cool as the diamond but cutting and invulnerable like it, too.
“Be welcome, Andrea, as ever,” said the Queen to this cold, walking ghost.
The countess shivered for she recognized some of the tone the Queen used to speak with when the Dauphiness.
“Needs must I tell your Majesty that she should not have had to send for me without the royal residence, if I had always been spoken to, in that tone?” said the countess.
Nothing could better help the Queen than this opening: she greeted it as facilitating her course.
“Alas, you ought to know that all womankind have not your immutable serenity,” she said; “I, above all, who had to ask your aid so generously accorded——“