Then, just as the young man was beginning to feel a little embarrassed at the quick patter of questions, wondering if he would be able to be as adequate as hitherto, remembering guiltily where he had met the King the night before, the Queen ceased to speak of her husband.
She began to ask him of Dr. Rowland Taylor and his end.
He told her some of the details as quietly as he could, trying to soften the horror which even now overwhelmed him in memory. At one question he hesitated for a moment, mistaking its intent, and the Queen touched him smartly on the arm.
"No, no," she said, "I don't want to hear of the runagate's torment. He suffered rightly, and doubtless his sufferings were great. But tell me not of them. They are not meet for our ears. Tell me of what he said, and if grace came to him at last."
He was forced to tell her, as he knew others would tell her afterwards, of the sturdy denial of the martyr till the very end.
And as he did so, he saw the face, which had been alight with tenderness and anxiety when the King's name was mentioned, gravely judicial and a little disgusted when the actual sufferings of the Archdeacon were touched upon, now become hard and cruel, aflame with bigotry.
"They shall go," the Queen said, rather to herself than to him. "They shall be rooted out; they shall die the death, and so may God's most Holy Church be maintained."
At that, with another and astonishing change of mood, she looked at the young man, looked him up and down, saw his long boots powdered with dust, his dress in disorder, him travel-stained and weary.
"You have done well," she said, with a very kindly and eminently human smile. "I would that all the younger gentlemen of our old houses were like you, Mr. Commendone. His Highness trusts you and likes you. I myself have reason to think well of you. You are tired by your long ride. Get you to your lodging, and if so you wish it, you shall do as you please to-night, for when His Highness returns I will see that he hath no need of you. And take this from your Queen."
In her hand the Queen carried a little volume, bound in Nile-green skin, powdered with gold heraldic roses. It was the Tristia et Epistolae ex Ponto of Ovid, which she had been reading. Johnnie sank upon one knee and took the book from the ivory-white and wrinkled hand.