Agnes was surprised and pained at this unwonted mood; and yet she would not deem it coldness, or say one word that might irritate her husband's mind; so that for long she left him to think in silence, seeing that something most agonising must evidently have happened, so to absorb his ideas, even beside her.
At length, however, without making a motion to withdraw her hand, she sunk slowly down upon her knees beside him; and, gazing up in his face, she asked, "Do you not love me, Philip?" in a low, sweet tone, that vibrated through his soul to all the gentler and dearer feelings of his heart.
"Love you, Agnes!" cried he, throwing his arms round her beautiful form, and pressing kiss upon kiss on her lips--"love you! Oh God! how deeply!" He gazed on her face for a moment or two, with one of those long, straining, wistful glances that we sometimes give to the dead; then, starting up, he paced the room for several minutes, murmuring some indistinct words to himself, till at length his steps grew slower again, his lips ceased to move, and he once more fell into deep meditation.
Agnes rose, and, advancing towards him, laid her hand affectionately upon his arm, "Calm yourself, Philip. Come and sit down again, and tell your Agnes what has disturbed you. Calm yourself, beloved! Oh, calm yourself!"
"Calm, madam!" said the king, turning towards her with an air of cold abstraction. "How would you have me calm?"
Agnes let her hand drop from his arm; and, returning to her seat, she bent her head down and wept silently.
Philip took another turn in the chamber, during which he twice turned his eyes upon the figure of his wife--then advanced towards her, and leaning down, cast his arm over her neck. "Weep not, dear Agnes," he said,--"weep not; I have many things to agitate and distress me. You must bear with me, and let my humour have its way."
Agnes looked up, and kissed the lips that spoke to her, through her tears. She asked no questions, however, lest she might recall whatever was painful to her husband's mind. Philip, too, glanced not for a moment towards the real cause of his agitation. There was something so pure, so tender, so beautiful, in the whole conduct and demeanour of his wife--so full of the same affection towards him that he felt towards her--so unmixed with the least touch of that constraint that might make her love doubted, that his suspicions stood reproved, and though they rankled still, he dared not own them.
"Can it be only a feeling of cold duty binds her to me thus?" he asked himself; "she cited nought else to support her resolution of not flying with that pale seducer, D'Auvergne; and yet, see how she strives for my affection! how she seems to fix her whole hopes upon it!--how to see it shaken agitates her!"
The fiend had his answer ready. It might be pride--the fear of sinking from the queen of a great kingdom, back into the daughter of a petty prince. It might be vanity--which would be painfully wrung to leave splendour, and riches, and admiration of a world, to become--what?--what had been the wife of a great king--a lonely, unnoticed outcast from her once husband's kingdom. Still, he thought it was impossible. She had never loved splendour--she had never sought admiration. Her delights had been with him alone, in sports and amusements that might be tasted, with any one beloved, even in the lowest station. It was impossible;--and yet it rankled. He felt he wronged her. He was ashamed of it;--and yet those thoughts rankled! Memory, too, dwelt with painful accuracy upon those words he had overheard,--notwithstanding her own feelings, she would not quit him!--and imagination, with more skill than the best sophist of the court of Crœsus, drew therefrom matter to basis a thousand painful doubts.