“Cyril, upbraid me, scold me—anything but look at me like that! Don’t speak so coldly, I can’t bear it. Cyril, what are you going to do?”
Her voice was almost a scream as she rose from her chair and tried to reach him, but tottered and fell at his feet, clinging to his hands in an agony of terror. He raised her silently, and placed her in her chair again.
“Cyril,” she said, holding his hand fast, “say something. Don’t look at me in that way. I thought you loved me once.”
“So I did—once,” he replied.
“And now—now?”
“I think it would be unnecessary, and perhaps painful to your Majesty, to enter into that question.”
“But you could not be so cruel as to punish me when I was as much astonished by what Michael said as you were? I have lost my son, I have lost Ottilie, who was once my friend—you cannot mean that I must lose you?”
“It is surely self-evident, madame, that a discredited politician out of office is not a fit match for a Queen.”
“Discredited—out of office! As though I cared! I love you, not your office—you more than ever, now that you have failed and are in trouble. You could not punish me so cruelly, Cyril? You will not forsake me after all the years that I have waited for you?”
“Pray do not lay the blame upon me, madame. The choice was in your own hands. You preferred your son’s whim to the success of my policy, and it only remains for me to congratulate your Majesty upon the acquisition of a most charming daughter-in-law, and to withdraw.”