“What is it, child?”
“Do not compel her, if she will not wed him,” said she. “I know—and—she did not—how terrible a thing it is.”
“Nay, patience, child,” he soothed her, smiling now, his smile as the sunshine that succeeds a thunderstorm.
“It is none so bad with her. She is but coy. They had plighted their troth already, so it seems. Besides, I do not compel her. She shall marry him of her own free will—or else go to Paris and stand her trial and the consequences.”
“They had plighted their troth, do you say?”
“Well—had you not, Monsieur le Seneschal?”
“We had, monsieur,” said Tressan, with conscious pride; “and for myself I am ready for these immediate nuptials.”
“Then, in God’s name, let Madame give us her answer now. We have not the day to waste.”
She stood looking at him, her toe tapping the ground, her eyes sullenly angry. And in the end, half-fainting in her great disdain, she consented to do his will. Paris and the wheel formed too horrible an alternative; besides, even if that were spared her, there was but a hovel in Touraine for her, and Tressan, for all his fat ugliness, was wealthy.
So the Abbot, who had lent himself to the mummery of coming there to read a burial service, made ready now, by order of the Queen’s emissary, to solemnize a wedding.