Beatrix looked round, more in fear than in suspicion, as a child does at night, when it has been frightened by a tale of goblins; and, turning, she caught sight of something and turned farther, and then started with a scared cry and half rose, with her hand on Gilbert's arm. Anxious for her, he sprang up to his height at the sound of her voice, and at the same moment he saw what she saw, and uttered an exclamation of surprise. It was not a cloud that had passed between them and the sun. The Queen stood there, as she had come from the Office in the church, a veil embroidered with gold pinned upon her head in a fashion altogether her own. Her clear eyes were very bright and hard, and her beautiful lips had a frozen look.
"It is very long since I have seen you," she said to Gilbert, "and I had not thought to see you here—of all places—unbidden."
"Nor I to be here, Madam," answered the Englishman.
"Did you come here in your sleep?" asked the Queen, coldly.
"For aught that I can tell how I got here, it may be as your Grace says. I came by such a way as I may not find again."
"I care not how soon you find another, sir, so that it be a way out."
Gilbert had never seen the Queen gravely displeased, and as yet she had been very kind to him when he had been in her presence. Against her anger he drew himself up, for he neither loved her nor feared her, and as he looked at her now he saw in her eyes that haunting memory of his own mother which had disturbed him more than once.
"I ask your Grace's pardon," he said slowly, "for having entered uninvited. Yet I am glad that I did, since I have found what was kept from me so long."
"I fancied your idol so changed that you might not care to find it after all!"
Beatrix hardly understood what the words meant, but she knew that they were intended to hurt both her and Gilbert, and she saw by his face what he felt. Knowing as she did that the Queen was very strongly attracted by him, she would not have been human if she had not felt in her throat the pulse of triumph, as she stood beside the most beautiful woman in the world, pale, slight, sad-eyed, but preferred before the other's supreme beauty by the one man whose preference meant anything at all. But a moment later she forgot herself and feared for him.