66 66 So? I did not recollect thee." Perhaps," came the malicious suggestion, your Grace's memory is not yet fully recovered. I trust you are feeling well?" "Vastly well, mistress, vastly well. I would I could think the same of you, but your pallor prevents me. Are you not faint?" "Nay, your Grace." "Tut! You are bravely feigning health. Why you are as white as a chalk you should have a dash of cold water to restore your natural complexion! Thy face is too sickly for thy word's credit. Why, thou art fairly green. Is she not, my lord?" Anne put unexpectedly to Henry in a tone of insistent solicitude, and Henry, taken unawares, could only gaze at the angry woman at whom his wife was pointing her fan. "I fear thou hast too much exerted thyself," went on Anne's mocking tones, edged with indescribable irony. "Master Secretary, give you your arm to escort this lady to the fresh air - she hath need of it," she commanded, and as her speechless rival took her enforced departure with the silent secretary, Anne turned swiftly to Henry to forestall any intention he might have of accompanying them. She shook her fan coquettishly at him. "Ah, fie, fie on thee, Harry! Tell me not that this is the very she that rumor hath been linking to thy name? I protest my vanity thought better of thy royal taste!" Her blithe audacity held Henry dumb, staring at her uncertainly as she flashed on, “La, sir, do you call that fair? Where are thy eyes? 'Tis a china mug when it grins 'twill crack, the colors are laid on so thick! La, how she glowered when I said 'water' to her!" Anne's laugh rang out infectiously; the dim ple in her cheek so long lost during her illness— flashed again into being. Henry, conscious that he was being treated like a school boy being weaned from a dangerous pastime, half minded to resist and show his spunk, but tickled in spite of himself by her sweeping assurance, found his vanity subtly flattered by a quality in that smile. It reminded him again how irresistible he was when fair women went battling for him, and, tasting that sweet, he yielded Anne a smile in return, half grudgingly at first, but deepening unconsciously as it rested on her. She was the very spirit of conquest in that red gown, clinging like a flame to her slenderness, the diamonds flashing on her dark hair like the starshine of the night outside. That smile, she knew, was her captured pennant, and the wine of victory ran through her. "Why, sir," she laughed, still shaking her fan at her husband, “if thou must leave me, let it be for nothing that will do such discredit to thy royal standards. Remember thou art a lesson to this court. Where else should taste be upheld save in the king? . . . Try that tall brunette over there. She hath at least some hair of her own. I vow I could summon a qualm or so about her, but as for this - this lady China-Mug I could not squeeze out a proper wifely tear!" Again Anne laughed and Henry joined her in a sudden shout and leaned forward and pinched her arm, in one of his veering reversals of humor. "By the Rood, an thou lookest like that, thou wilt never have cause for tears!" he vowed. "I believe thee!" Anne tossed her head airily and the diamonds glistened like falling spray. "My mirror told me as much before thee!" "But did not tell thee as will I," he breathed into her ear. Ah, how easy, her confident vanity gayly reassured her, how easy it all was for her, after all! . . . And how easy it was later, when they were alone in her chamber, to fully complete that victory and bind him to her with those charms she knew so well how to exert! Kisses, flattery, love words, adoration unstinted she knew the way very well. She had only to force her reluctant arms into a tender clasp, only to play traitor to that terrible shrinking in herself from what he called his love, only to betray her cold lips and unwilling flesh. Never again for her now the old veil of romance and tender illusion. Life was mercilessly clear. Never again those maiden-misted dreams! But this was the price. She paid it for her crown, for the redemption of her pride and the exultation of her spirit. She paid for her daughter's heritage. Many women paid it for less. . . . So she told herself when the king slept and she lay wide-eyed at his side, staring into the darkness. In the morning the decree went forth that Mary Tudor must no longer be known as Princess, but as Lady Mary. Elizabeth was the only princess in England. As soon as might be Henry proposed to have Parliament ratify this and pass a definite Act of Succession. When Elizabeth was three months old it was considered high time for her to have an establishment of her own according to all royal precedent. Anne had dreaded. this time and she would have opposed it but for fear of lessening Elizabeth's position as a princess by leaving unfulfilled any of her prerogatives. So the mother stifled the cravings of her reawakened heart and the three-months' baby went to Hatfield in |