"
"I know that, I know that, Mr. Norris. Tell me something she said."
Anthony racked his brains for something not too severe.
"Mistress Corbet once said that the Queen's most disobedient subject was
herself."
"Eh?" said Elizabeth, stopping in her walk.
"'Because,' said Mistress Corbet, 'she can never command herself,'"
finished Anthony.
The Queen looked at Anthony, puzzled a moment; and then chuckled loudly
in her throat.
"The impertinent minx!" she said, "that was when I had clouted her, no
doubt."
Again they walked up and down in silence a little while. Anthony began to
wonder whether this was all for which the Queen had sent for him. He was
astonished at his own self-possession; all the trembling awe with which
he had faced the Queen at Greenwich was gone; he had forgotten for the
moment even his own peril; and he felt instead even something of pity for
this passionate old woman, who had aged so quickly, whose favourites one
by one were dropping off, or at the best giving her only an exaggerated
and ridiculous devotion, at the absurdity of which all the world laughed.
Here was this old creature at his side, surrounded by flatterers and
adventurers, advancing through the world in splendid and jewelled
raiment, with trumpets blowing before her, and poets singing her praises,
and crowds applauding in the streets, and sneering in their own houses at
the withered old virgin-Queen who still thought herself a Diana--and all
the while this triumphal progress was at the expense of God's Church, her
car rolled over the bodies of His servants, and her shrunken, gemmed
fingers were red in their blood;--so she advanced, thought Anthony, day
by day towards the black truth and the eternal loneliness of the darkness
that lies outside the realm where Christ only is King.
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