queen

But good Queen Eleanor smiled pleasantly upon him, bidding him to arise.

On each side of the archery range were rows upon rows of seats reaching high aloft, and in the center of the north side was a raised dais for the King and Queen, shaded by canvas of gay colors, and hung about with streaming silken pennants of red and blue and green and white.

`I see!' said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the roses.

`That's right!' shouted the Queen. `Can you play croquet?'

So much had he boasted of these men, that the Queen had secretly resolved to win a wager of him.

To-day the Queen sat in her private audience-room chatting pleasantly with her ladies, when in came Mistress Marian Fitzwalter attired again as befitted her rank of lady-in-waiting.

"It is because in my prosperity I forgot those old friends, monsieur; because I have acted like Queen Marie de Medicis, who, returning from her first exile, treated with contempt all those who had suffered for her and, being proscribed a second time, died at Cologne abandoned by every one, even by her own son."

"What is he aiming at?" murmured the queen, looking uneasily at the cardinal.

"And you are certain that the queen and he did not see each other?"

"I believe the queen to have too high a sense of her duty, sire."

'Where do you come from?' said the Red Queen. 'And where are you going?

'I don't know what you mean by YOUR way,' said the Queen: 'all the ways about here belong to ME--but why did you come out here at all?' she added in a kinder tone.

Then the queen was very much frightened; for she knew that the glass always spoke the truth, and was sure that the servant had betrayed her.

Then they said, 'The old woman was the queen herself; take care another time, and let no one in when we are away.'