"You have a way of making unpleasant things pleasant; and you might have persuaded me to do what he wished."
"There are not many women who would need much persuasion to be a Queen."
"Without conditions, perhaps."
"There is one condition I would never have advocated," said I, raising my eyes to hers. "But you will be a Queen after all, and we your humble servants, wishful only to obey your royal commands."
"I have settled one of the first uses I shall make of my power," she said, looking up and speaking as if seriously.
"And that will be?"
"You will be the object of it. I shall issue an order in council—Privy Council."
"Privy Council! You are getting learned in the jargon of State. I am afraid your Privy Council will be a very small one."
"Yes," she cried, nodding her head and smiling. "We two. And the order will be that my chief councillor shall tell me all the story of his life. If you won't tell it to your cousin, you must tell it to your Queen. And I know there are secrets in it. You think I don't take notice of you, I suppose; and never know when your thoughts are slipping away to the past and never see that you fence with my questions, and glide away so cleverly from the little traps I lay. You mustn't think because you would make me a Queen that I have ceased to be a woman—and, being a woman, to be curious."
"We have no time in these days——"