'François,' she pleaded, with the tenderness of a doting mother. 'Mon petit François! For my sake, if not for yours! You don't know how I have toiled and worked so that this should come to pass. I want you to be great and mighty and influential. I hate your being in the humiliating position of a younger brother beside Henri, who is so arrogant and dictatorial with us all. François, dear, I have worked for you because I love you. Let me have my reward!'
Monsieur sighed like the spoilt child he really was, and made his habitual sour grimace.
'You are too good to me, Margot,' he said somewhat churlishly. 'I would you had left the matter alone. Our brother Henri cannot live for ever, and his good wife has apparently no intention of presenting him with a son.'
'Our brother Henri,' she insisted, 'can live on until you are too old to enjoy the reversion of the throne of France, and Louise de Lorraine is still young—who knows? The Duchies of Artois and Hainault and the Sovereignty of the Netherlands to-day are worth more than the vague perspective of the throne of France mayhap ten or a dozen years hence——'
'And my marriage with Elizabeth of England?' he protested.
'Elizabeth of England will never marry you, François,' she replied earnestly. 'She is too fanatical a Protestant ever to look with favour on a Catholic prince. She will keep you dangling round her skirts and fool you to the top of her bent, but Milor of Leycester will see to it that you do not wed the Queen of England.'
'If I marry this Flemish wench I shall be burning my boats——'
'What matter?' she retorted hotly, 'if you enter so glorious a harbour?'
There was nothing in the world that suited Monsieur's temperament better than lengthy discussions over a decision, which could thereby be conveniently put off. Even now he would have talked and argued and worn his sister's patience down to breaking point if suddenly the corridor outside had not resounded with martial footsteps and the jingling of swords and spurs.
'François!' pleaded Marguerite for the last time.