Elizabeth pushed a velvet cushion towards Angèle, where she half-knelt, half-sat on the rush-strewn floor of the great chamber. The warm light of the afternoon sun glowed through the thick-tinted glass high up, and in the gleam the heavy tapestries sent by an archduke, once suitor for her hand, emerged with dramatic distinctness, and peopled the room with silent watchers of the great Queen and the nobly born but poor and fugitive Huguenot. A splendid piece of sculpture--Eleanor, wife of Edward--given Elizabeth by another royal suitor, who had sought to be her consort through many years, caught the warm bath of gold and crimson from the clerestory and seemed alive and breathing. Against the pedestal the Queen had placed her visitor, the red cushions making vivid contrast to her white gown and black hair. In the half-kneeling, half-sitting posture, with her hands clasped before her, so to steady herself to composure, Angèle looked a suppliant--and a saint. Her pure, straightforward gaze, her smooth, urbane forehead, the guilelessness that spoke in every feature, were not made worldly by the intelligence and humor reposing in the brown depths of her eyes. Not a line vexed her face or forehead. Her countenance was of a singular and almost polished smoothness, and though her gown was severely simple by comparison with silks and velvets, furs and ruffles of a gorgeous court at its most gorgeous period, yet in it here and there were touches of exquisite fineness. The black velvet ribbon slashing her sleeves, the slight, cloudlike gathering of lace at the back of her head, gave a distinguished softness to her appearance. She was in curious contrast to the Queen, who sat upon heaped-up cushions, her rich buff-and-black gown a blaze of jewels, her yellow hair, now streaked with gray, roped with pearls, her hands heavy with rings, her face past its youth, past its hopefulness, however noble and impressive, past its vivid beauty. Her eyes wore ever a determined look, were persistent and vigilant, with a lurking trouble, yet flooded, too, by a quiet melancholy, like a low, insistent note that floats through an opera of passion, romance, and tragedy; like a tone of pathos giving deep character to some splendid pageant, which praises while it commemorates, proclaiming conquest while the grass has not yet grown on quiet houses of the children of the sword who no more wield the sword. Evasive, cautious, secretive, creator of her own policy, she had sacrificed her womanhood to the power she held and the State she served. Vain, passionate, and faithful, her heart all England and Elizabeth, the hunger for glimpses of what she had never known, and was never to know, thrust itself into her famished life; and she was wont to indulge, as now, in fancies and follow some emotional whim with a determination very like to eccentricity. [Illustration: “SHE WAS IN CURIOUS CONTRAST TO THE QUEEN”]