"And he has been loyal to you," continued Anne, "and gentle and patient."
Anne shrugged her shoulders.
"I shall never be happy here. If he had loved me," she said, with brutal frankness, "he might have changed me—but he never did—and for his kindness, did I want that? He is kind to every one, he finds it the easier way. I have always been curst. I wish I were dead; and now we are ruined too."
"Consider, Madame, the Prince has made these sacrifices to help the Reformers, and you are a Lutheran."
"Lutheran or Papist are nothing to me," answered Anne, "nor God either—why did He make women curst and crooked?"
She lifted her head, and, seeing Rénèe with her arms full of clothes, she called out imperiously, "Put down those things! I will never leave the Netherlands!"
As she spoke the Prince entered; Anne rose and faced him with the look of an adversary.
"My wife," he said at once, "I come to implore you to hasten."
Anne's face hardened into compressed lips and puckered brows until it was like an ugly wax mask.
"News?" she asked briefly.