‘But she may be killed,’ exclaimed the Queen.
‘We may all be killed, Madame,’ he replied lightly. ‘I beg that you will start at once in my carriage with your chaplain and the holy lady who is doubtless travelling with you.’
The Queen glanced sharply at him. It was known that although her own life was anything but exemplary, she loved to associate with women who, under the cloak of religion and an austere virtue, intrigued with all parties and condoned the Queen’s offences.
‘I cannot understand you,’ she said, with that sudden lapse into familiarity which had led to the undoing of more than one ambitious courtier. ‘You seem to worship the crown and despise the head it rests on.’
‘So long as I serve your Majesty faithfully—’
‘But you have no right to despise me,’ she interrupted passionately.
‘If I despised you, should I be here now—should I be doing you this service?’
‘I do not know. I tell you I do not understand you.’
And the Queen looked hard at the man who, for this very reason, interested one who had all her life dealt and intrigued with men of obvious motive and unblushing ambition.
So strong is a ruling passion that even in sight of death (for the Queen Regent knew that Spain was full of her enemies and rendered callous to bloodshed by a long war) vanity was alert in this woman’s breast. Even while General Vincente, that unrivalled strategist, detailed his plans, she kept harking back to the question that puzzled her, and but half listened to his instructions.