He started, as a light touch fell on his shoulder, and he saw the Queen standing beside him. She held the paper he had given her in one hand, and as he looked at her enquiringly she touched it with her lips, and placed it in her bosom.
“I swear my obedience to your instructions, Sir!” she said,—“Do not fear to trust me!”
Gently he took her hands and kissed them.
“I thank you!” he said simply.
For a moment they confronted each other. The beautiful cold woman’s eyes drooped under the somewhat sad and searching gaze of the man.
“But—your life!—” she murmured.
“My life!” He laughed and dropped her hands. “Would you care, Madam, if I were dead? Would you shed any tears? Not you! Why should you? At this late hour of time, when after twenty-one years passed in each other’s close company we are no nearer to each other in heart and soul than if the sea murmuring yonder at the foot of these walls were stretching its whole width between us! Besides—we are both past our youth! And, according to certain highly instructed scientists and philosophers, the senses and affections grow numb with age. I do not believe this theory myself—for the jejune love of youth is as a taper’s flame to the great and passionate tenderness of maturity, when the soul, and not the body, claims its due; when love is not dragged down to the vulgar level of mere cohabitation, after the fashion of the animals in a farmyard, but rises to the best height of human sympathy and intelligent comprehension. Who knows!—I may experience such a love as that yet,—and so may you!”
She was silent.
“Talking of love,”—he went on—“May I ask whether our son,—or rather the nation’s son, Humphry,—ever makes you his confidante?”
“Never!” she replied.