"Speak now, mistress fugitive, and I will listen," she added, as Cecil withdrew; and she made a motion to musicians in a distant gallery.
Angele's heart fluttered to her mouth, but the soft, simple music helped her, and she began with eyes bent upon the ground, her linked fingers clasping and unclasping slowly.
"I was born at Rouen, your high Majesty," she said. "My mother was a cousin of the Prince of Passy, the great Protestant--"
"Of Passy--ah!" said Elizabeth amazed. "Then you are Protestants indeed; and your face is no invention, but cometh honestly. No, no, 'tis no accident--God rest his soul, great Passy!"
"She died--my mother--when I was a little child. I can but just remember her--so brightly quiet, so quick, so beautiful. In Rouen life had little motion; but now and then came stir and turmoil, for war sent its message into the old streets, and our captains and our peasants poured forth to fight for the King. Once came the King and Queen--Francis and Mary--"
Elizabeth drew herself upright with an exclamation. "Ah, you have seen her--Mary of Scots," she said sharply. "You have seen her?"
"As near as I might touch her with my hand, as near as is your high Majesty. She spoke to me--my mother's father was in her train;--as yet we had not become Huguenots, nor did we know her Majesty as now the world knows. They came, the King and Queen--and that was the beginning."
She paused, and looked shyly at Elizabeth, as though she found it hard to tell her story.
"And the beginning, it was--?" said Elizabeth, impatient and intent.
"We went to Court. The Queen called my mother into her train. But it was in no wise for our good. At Court my mother pined away--and so she died in durance."
"Wherefore in durance?"
"To what she saw she would not shut her eyes; to what she heard she would not close her soul; what was required of her she would not do."
"She would not obey the Queen?"
"She could not obey those whom the Queen favoured. Then the tyranny that broke her heart--"
The Queen interrupted her.
"In very truth, but 'tis not in France alone that Queen's favourites grasp the sceptre and speak the word. Hath a Queen a thousand eyes--can she know truth where most dissemble?"
"There was a man--he could not know there was one true woman there, who for her daughter's sake, for her desired advancement, and because she was cousin of Passy, who urged it, lived that starved life; this man, this prince, drew round her feet snares, set pit-falls for her while my father was sent upon a mission. Steadfast she kept her soul unspotted; but it wore away her life. The Queen would not permit return to Rouen--who can tell what tale was told her by one whom she foiled? And so she stayed. In this slow, savage persecution, when she was like a bird that, thinking it is free, flieth against the window-pane and falleth back beaten, so did she stay, and none could save her. To cry out, to throw herself upon the spears, would have been ruin of herself, her husband and her child; and for these she lived."