“Seems as though your wife, Francis, and my wife-to-be, aren’t going to hit it off too well together,” Henry said, with the sharpness of censure that man is wont to employ to conceal the embarrassment caused by his womankind.
And, as inevitable result of such male men’s ways, all that Henry gained was a silence more awkward and more embarrassing. The two women almost enjoyed the situation. Francis cudgeled his brains vainly for some remark that would ameliorate matters; while Henry, in desperation, arose suddenly with the observation that he was going to “explore a bit,” and invited, by his hand out to help her to her feet, the Queen to accompany him. Francis and Leoncia sat on for a moment in stubborn silence. He was the first to break it.
“For two cents I’d give you a thorough shaking, Leoncia.”
“And what have I done now?” she countered.
“As if you didn’t know. You’ve been behaving abominably.”
“It is you who have behaved abominably,” she half-sobbed, in spite of her determination to betray no such feminine signs of weakness. “Who asked you to marry her? You did not draw the short straw. Yet you must volunteer, must rush in where even angels would fear to tread? Did I ask you to? Almost did my heart stop beating when I heard you tell Henry you would marry her. I thought I was going to faint. You had not even consulted me; yet it was on my suggestion, in order to save you from her, that the straws were drawn——yes, and I am not too little shameless to admit that it was because I wanted to save you for myself. Henry does not love me as you led me to believe you loved me. I never loved Henry as I loved you, as I do love you even now, God forgive me.”
Francis was swept beyond himself. He caught her and pressed her to him in a crushing embrace.
“And on your very wedding day,” she gasped reproachfully in the midmost of his embrace.
His arm died away from about her.
“And this from you, Leoncia, at such a moment,” he murmured sadly.