The duke dashed away to his own apartment. "England may well be an island," he exclaimed, "for the women are as changeable as the waves that encircle it." The queen had given him a ring, and now he threw it into the farthest corner of the room. He would have left England at once, but Elizabeth would not permit him to go, and when after three months he declared that he would stay no longer, she persisted in going to Canterbury with him, much against his will. He left her weeping, and while he was crossing the Channel, she was writing a poem beginning:-- "I grieve yet dare not show my discontent; I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate." "Monsieur" was the last of Elizabeth's suitors. Eleven years had passed since his marriage with the queen had first been discussed. She was now fifty years of age; the country settled into the belief that she would never marry, and most people expected that the next ruler of England would be the son of Mary, the prisoner. No one knows whether Elizabeth was in earnest or not in any of the plans for her marriage. Leicester said: "Should she decide to marry, I am all but convinced that she would choose no other than myself,--at least, she has done me the honor to say as much--but I know not what to hope or what to fear." In the early part of her reign her subjects were nearly equally divided into Catholics and Protestants. It was her policy to be a Protestant, but to do nothing that would arouse the Catholics against her, as a Protestant marriage would surely have done. If on the other hand she had chosen a Catholic, then the ruling power of the country would have been enraged. She declared over and over that she would never marry one of her own subjects, and she had not forgotten the indignation of the English when Mary persisted in marrying a foreigner. Two things were worth more to this queen than all else in the world; one was the love of her subjects, the other was her own power. Any marriage that she might make would deprive her in some degree of one or the other. Her word could not always be trusted, but there is certainly some reason for believing that she was truthful in declaring that she did not mean to marry, and that if she changed her mind, it would be only to obey the demand of the country.