Now the younger lady, returning to her place, stood awestruck a moment, then bent and whispered to her mother, “O, madam, the Tower gun! How shall we close her Grace’s ears to it?”
The Queen, hearing the whisper but not its import, started, and, with a deep flurried sigh, turned round. The wild tumult of thoughts in her mind found expression in detached and broken questions, abstractions, self-communings.
“‘All wounds have scars but that of fantasy, all affections their relenting but that of womankind.’ Who writ those words? Not the mutinous boy. ’Twas Raleigh—he that saw us like Dian, the gentle wind blowing the hair from our face. Essex never spoke such balm. He was no courtier—the worse for him. Am I like Dian?”
The elder lady had arisen hurriedly, and stood, her daughter clinging to her arm, to answer to the voice, which appeared to have addressed her.
“Yes, madam,” she whispered low.
“He never flattered, I say,” went on the Queen. “He was too honest—the devil damn honesty! What day is it?”
“Your Highness,” was the tremulous answer, “it is the twenty-fifth day of February.”
She had known it well enough. All night within her haunted brain the horror of this coming day had brooded—this ghastly morning when on Tower Hill the young Earl of Essex—he was but thirty-four—was to pay the penalty of his madness. She stood staring before her, like one tranced.
“Never flattered,” she repeated—“a bad policy where a woman reigns. The twenty-fifth, is it? Let us know if my Lord of Essex sends or writes.”
“Yes, madam—O yes, indeed!”