Great cheering here broke in, and for a time she could get no further. Ever alive to the bent of the popular mind, she had chosen a perfect occasion to take them into her confidence--however little or much she would abide by her words, or intended the union of which she spoke. In the past she had counselled with her great advisers, with Cecil and the rest, and through them messages were borne to the people; but now she spoke direct to them all, and it had its immediate reward--the acclamations were as those with which she was greeted when she first passed through the streets of London on inheriting the crown. Well pleased, she continued: “This I will do with expedition and weightiest judgment, for of little account though I am, he that sits with the Queen of England in this realm, must needs be a prince indeed.... So be ye sure of this that ye shall have your heartmost wishes, and there shall be one to come after me who will wear this crown even as I have worn, in direct descent, my father’s crown. Our dearest sister, the Queen of the Scots, hath been delivered of a fair son; and in high affection the news thereof she hath sent me, with a palfrey which I shall ride among you in token of the love I bear her Majesty. She hath in her time got an heir to the throne with which we are ever in kinship and alliance, and I in my time shall give ye your hearts’ desire.” Angèle, who had, with palpitating heart and swimming head, seen Michel de la Forêt leave the lists and disappear among the trees, as mysteriously as he came, was scarce conscious of the cheers and riotous delight that followed Elizabeth’s tactful if delusive speech to the people. A few whispered words from the Duke’s Daughter had told her that Michel had obeyed the Queen’s command in entering the lists and taking up the challenge; and that she herself, carrying the royal message to him and making arrangements for his accoutrement and mounting, had urged him to obedience. She observed dryly that he had needed little pressure, and that his eyes had lighted at the prospect of the combat. Apart from his innate love of fighting, he had realized that in the moment of declining to enter the Queen’s service he had been at a disadvantage, and that his courage was open to attack by the incredulous or malicious. This would have mattered little were it not that he had been given unusual importance as a prisoner by the Queen’s personal notice of himself. He had, therefore, sprung to the acceptance, and sent his humble duty to the Queen by her winsome messenger, who, with conspicuous dramatic skill, had arranged secretly, with the help of a Gentleman Pensioner and the Master of the Horse, his appearance and his exit. That all succeeded as she had planned quickened her pulses, and made her heart still warmer to Angèle, who, now that all was over, and her Huguenot lover had gone his mysterious way, seemed lost in a troubled reverie.