“Oh, if only you had it!”
They had not long to wait for the dread summons to the Queen. All too soon appeared the Lord Treasurer. At once, he ushered them into the room where the Queen sat.
Gervase had cast off his disguise. No longer was he the aged and bearded Italian music master, but a trim and rather fine young man, dressed very soberly, to be sure, yet affecting a style not out of place at that Court, of which less than a year ago he had been an ornament.
Anne remained, however, in her charming boy’s dress of the previous day. The lean grace of outline was rendered more poignant by the thin brown cheeks, the bright, grave eyes, the head of close-clipt curls. In the wistfulness of this frail figure, chastened by the long night of the soul, there was a pathos which struck at the hearts of all who beheld it.
Besides, the Queen and the Lord Treasurer, there was one other person in the room. Gervase and Anne, for all that they were passing through a nightmare of dull terror, were sensible of a presence in the background. It was their friend the play-actor, grave of look and yet unfearing; gentle, pitiful, and yet secure of soul. Somehow, the sight of him who had done so much, who had put his fortunes to the proof, nay, even life itself, that he might help them, moved these hapless lovers to new courage.
From the gentle face of this man, all compassion, all tenderness, their eyes sought that of the Queen. That was a very different countenance. And yet, as those hawklike eyes met theirs, a curious light ran in them. It was almost as if, in spite of herself, Elizabeth had been moved by the sight of this shadowy, yet dauntless thing, this Rosalind who yesterday had charmed her with her coquetry, her grace, her sorcery of voice and look.
“Mistress Feversham”—the harsh voice seemed to assault their ears, so sharp it was, so merciless—“I am given to understand you are a woman. But let me say that, in the moment I saw you first, I knew that you were that.” Here the voice fell away with the oddest suddenness. A tense moment passed in which it seemed that the sovereign could hardly trust herself to speak. “And, by God, you are a brave woman! ... a very brave woman, even if you are a very froward one.”
The Queen turned abruptly to the Lord Treasurer. There was a sour and cruel smile on the thin lips.
“Do we understand,” she said, “that there is a boon Mistress Feversham would crave at our hands?”
A silence followed the question—a silence in which Elizabeth and her minister looked without pity upon the shrinking pair who stood before them.