"So that is what you plan, is it?" he roared. "And here you stand before me and tell your schemes to become queen and raise some miserable rascal to the throne. Get out of my sight, ingrate that you are." Quick-witted as Elizabeth was, she did not at once see wherein she was in fault. She was so dazed by this sudden fury that she did not even think to throw herself at the feet of the king and beg to be forgiven, even though she knew not for what. The stepmother pleaded, "Pardon the child, my king. She meant no wrong." "No wrong," thundered the king. "Is it 'no wrong' to plan what she will do as soon as the breath is out of her father's body? I tell you, girl, that you may find another father and another throne, for never shall you sit upon mine. Get to your litter, and do you never come before my eyes again." The little Edward had slipped up softly behind his angry father and had laid his tiny hand upon the king's purple cheek. "Your Majesty is naughty," he declared gravely. "You have made my sweetest sister cry. I don't want my sister to cry." Never had the little boy received a harsh word from his father, and he was perhaps the only one in the kingdom who had no fear of the king. "Come," said he, "and tell her not to cry." He caught the king by the hand, but even for his son King Henry's anger could not be suppressed. "You little know her," he said. "It is you that she would rob. She would seize upon the place that is your own and drive you from it. Tell her to depart from the palace and never enter it," he commanded his chamberlain, and soon the little girl, not yet twelve years old, was sent away from the court in disgrace. "Hold yourself with patience," whispered the queen to the child. "Trust me, and believe that it shall not be long before you will again be sent for." CHAPTER III A BOY KING The queen did all in her power for the little offender, but it was a whole year before she was again allowed to come to court. There was war in France, and the king sailed away in his ship with its sails of cloth of gold, apparently forgetting all about the little daughter whom he had left without a word of farewell. The child dared not write him, but she wrote the queen a grateful little Italian letter. "I feel bound not only to be obedient to you," she said, "but also to look up to you with filial love, and chiefly because I learn that you, most illustrious Highness, never forget me in your letters to his Majesty, the king." Then she begged the queen when writing the king, always to speak of her. "Commend me to him with my continual prayer that he will give me his kind blessing," pleaded the anxious child.