“Well,” said the Queen, turning to them and showing her black teeth in a smile. “Have I kept my word?”
“Ah! your Grace,” said Mary, curtseying to the ground, “you have made some simple loving hearts very happy to-day—I do not mean Sir Francis’.”
The Queen laughed.
“Come here, child,” she said, holding out her glittering hand, “down here,” and Mary sank down on the Queen’s footstool, and leaned against her knee like a child, smiling up into her face; while Elizabeth put her hand under her chin and kissed her twice on the forehead.
“There, there,” she said caressingly, “have I made amends? Am I a hard mistress?”
And she threw her left hand round the girl’s neck and began to play with the diamond pendant in her ear, and to stroke the smooth curve of her cheek with her flashing fingers.
Anthony, a little on one side, stood watching and wondering at this silky tigress who raged so fiercely just now.
Elizabeth looked up in a moment and saw him.
“Why, here is the tall lad here still,” she said, “eyeing us as if we were monsters. Have you never yet seen two maidens loving one another, that you stare so with your great eyes? Aha! Minnie; he would like to be sitting where I am—is it not so, sir?”
“I would sooner stand where I am, madam,” said Anthony, by a sudden inspiration, “and look upon your Grace.”