“Have you no questions to ask?” she demanded.
I shook my head. “None, madam.”
“I was the King's ward!” she cried.
I bowed, but spoke no word, though she waited for me.
“If you will listen,” she said at last, proudly, and yet with a pleading sweetness,—“if you will listen, I will tell you how it was that I—that I came to wrong you so.”
“I am listening, madam,” I replied.
She stood against the light, the roses pressed to her bosom, her dark eyes upon me, her head held high. “My mother died when I was born; my father, years ago. I was the King's ward. While the Queen lived she kept me with her,—she loved me, I think; and the King too was kind,—would have me sing to him, and would talk to me about witchcraft and the Scriptures, and how rebellion to a king is rebellion to God. When I was sixteen, and he tendered me marriage with a Scotch lord, I, who loved the gentleman not, never having seen him, prayed the King to take the value of my marriage and leave me my freedom. He was so good to me then that the Scotch lord was wed elsewhere, and I danced at the wedding with a mind at ease. Time passed, and the King was still my very good lord. Then, one black day, my Lord Carnal came to court, and the King looked at him oftener than at his Grace of Buckingham. A few months, and my lord's wish was the King's will. To do this new favorite pleasure he forgot his ancient kindness of heart; yea, and he made the law of no account. I was his kinswoman, and under my full age; he would give my hand to whom he chose. He chose to give it to my Lord Carnal.”
She broke off, and turned her face from me toward the slant sunshine without the window. Thus far she had spoken quietly, with a certain proud patience of voice and bearing; but as she stood there in a silence which I did not break, the memory of her wrongs brought the crimson to her cheeks and the anger to her eyes. Suddenly she burst forth passionately: “The King is the King! What is a subject's will to clash with his? What weighs a woman's heart against his whim? Little cared he that my hand held back, grew cold at the touch of that other hand in which he would have put it. What matter if my will was against that marriage? It was but the will of a girl, and must be broken. All my world was with the King; I, who stood alone, was but a woman, young and untaught. Oh, they pressed me sore, they angered me to the very heart! There was not one to fight my battle, to help me in that strait, to show me a better path than that I took. With all my heart, with all my soul, with all my might, I hate that man which that ship brought here to-day! You know what I did to escape them all, to escape that man. I fled from England in the dress of my waiting maid and under her name. I came to Virginia in that guise. I let myself be put up, appraised, cried for sale, in that meadow yonder, as if I had been indeed the piece of merchandise I professed myself. The one man who approached me with respect I gulled and cheated. I let him, a stranger, give me his name. I shelter myself now behind his name. I have foisted on him my quarrel. I have—Oh, despise me, if you will! You cannot despise me more than I despise myself!”
I stood with my hand upon the table and my eyes studying the shadow of the vines upon the floor. All that she said was perfectly true, and yet—I had a vision of a scarlet and black figure and a dark and beautiful face. I too hated my Lord Carnal.
“I do not despise you, madam,” I said at last. “What was done two weeks ago in the meadow yonder is past recall. Let it rest. What is mine is yours: it's little beside my sword and my name. The one is naturally at my wife's service; for the other, I have had some pride in keeping it untarnished. It is now in your keeping as well as my own. I do not fear to leave it there, madam.”