"As fer bein' loony, I can tell you this. Ef you was where I come from in America, they'd say every blessed one of ye was crazy as a hen with her head off."
"America!" exclaimed the Queen, as a new thought struck her. "America! Tell me, dame, come you from the New World?"
"That's what it's sometimes called in the geographies," Rebecca stiffly replied. "I come from Peltonville, New Hampshire, myself. Perhaps I'd ought to introduce myself. My name's Rebecca Wise, daughter of Wilmot and Nancy Wise, both deceased."
She concluded her sentence with more of graciousness than she had shown in the beginning, and the Queen, now fully convinced of the innocent sincerity of her visitor, showed a countenance of half-amused, half-eager interest.
"Why, Sir Walter," she cried, "this cometh within your province, methinks. If that this good woman be an American, you should be best able to parley with her and learn her will."
A dark-haired, stern-visaged man of middle height, dressed less extravagantly than his fellows, acknowledged this address by advancing and bending one knee to the deck. Here was no longer the gay young courtier who so gallantly spoiled a handsome cloak to save his sovereign's shoes, but the Raleigh who had fought a hundred battles for the same mistress and had tasted the bitterness of her jealous cruelty in reward.
There was in his pose and manner, however, much of that old grace which had first endeared him to Elizabeth, and even now served to fix her fickle favor.
"Most fair and gracious Majesty," he said in a low, well-modulated voice, turning upward a seeming fascinated eye, "what Walter Raleigh hath learned of any special knowledge his sovereign hath taught him, and all that he is is hers of right."
"'Tis well, my good knight," said Elizabeth, beckoning with her slender finger that he might rise. "We know your true devotion and require now this service, that you question this stranger in her own tongue concerning her errand here and her quality and estate at home."
As Raleigh rose and advanced toward Rebecca, without turning away from the Queen, the half-bewildered American brought the end of her umbrella sharply down upon the floor with a gesture of impatience.