Then her tone changed and her face softened wonderfully as she took his hand.
"I am glad that you do not believe it," she said; "and I am glad that you do not care to be thought handsome. But I think it is true that the Queen loves you, and if she sent to England for me, that was merely in order to bring you back to France. Of course she could not know—"
She checked herself, and he, of course, asked what she had meant to say, and insisted upon knowing.
"The Queen could not know," she said at last, "that we should seem so strange to each other when we met."
"Do I seem so strange to you?" he asked, in a sorrowful tone.
"No," she answered, "it is the other way. I can see that you expected me to be very different."
"Indeed, I did not," answered Gilbert, with some indignation. "At least," he added hastily, "if I thought anything about it, I did not expect that you would be half so pretty, or half—"
"If you thought anything about it," laughed Beatrix, interrupting him.
"You know what I mean," he said, justly annoyed by his own lack of tact.
"Oh, yes; of course I do—that is the trouble."