“‘All wounds have scars but that of fantasy, all affections their relenting but that of womankind.’ Who writ those words? Not the mutinous boy. ’Twas Raleigh--he that saw us like Dian, the gentle wind blowing the hair from our face. Essex never spoke such balm. He was no courtier--the worse for him. Am I like Dian?” The elder lady had arisen hurriedly, and stood, her daughter clinging to her arm, to answer to the voice, which appeared to have addressed her. “Yes, madam,” she whispered low. “He never flattered, I say,” went on the Queen. “He was too honest--the devil damn honesty! What day is it?” “Your Highness,” was the tremulous answer, “it is the twenty-fifth day of February.” She had known it well enough. All night within her haunted brain the horror of this coming day had brooded--this ghastly morning when on Tower Hill the young Earl of Essex--he was but thirty-four--was to pay the penalty of his madness. She stood staring before her, like one tranced. “Never flattered,” she repeated--“a bad policy where a woman reigns. The twenty-fifth, is it? Let us know if my Lord of Essex sends or writes.” “Yes, madam--O yes, indeed!” The girl, leaning to her mother, buried her pale face in her shoulder. “Hush!” whispered the Queen; “was not that a step?” “Indeed, madam, I cannot hear a sound.” “A stubborn, relentless dog!” muttered the Queen hoarsely. “Let the axe convince him. He will see clearer being dead--no longer dub my mind as crooked as my body; learn that the soul’s glory waxeth with the years, striving to slough its vesture like a snake. A fool, that cannot penetrate that crackling veil, and see, other than a boy, how Truth abhors externals. Raleigh is older; Raleigh can look deeper. Shall I not be Dian still to him?” She faced her frightened witnesses with the enormous challenge--an old, arid, charmless woman of sixty-eight. Her withered, clay-white face was latticed with countless wrinkles; her nose was high and pinched; her thin, bloodless lips parted to show a ruin of blackened teeth--little spoiled and broken gravestones recording dead memories. Her gullet pursed; her eyes were bloodshot; the red periwig on her poll glowed like a dull flame over expiring ashes. Even her sloven dress betrayed the sickness of her spirit. “Yes, indeed, madam,” said the mother. “You lie!” cried Elizabeth fiercely. “He is false like the rest. His eyes betray his lips. Their love-light is the gilding on my crown. When he looks beneath I see mine image in them, an old and loveless woman--barren, and old, and loveless. Do you not hear my heart cry? It turns on a dry axle. O, I would give my queenhood to weep! So utterly alone--no child, no heir, no hope. They say that Charles of Valois wasted and died of poison. What could he expect? Was he not a prince and curst to flattery?” She strode up and down once or twice in intolerable anguish. “Truth!” she cried--“truth! And yet when it was mine at last, I turned and struck it down.”