The Queen was not yet risen, but sent them word that she would receive the abbot, 'but on no account Madame de Saint-Pol.' Jehane pushed off the insult just as she pushed her hot hair from her face. She had no thoughts to spare for herself. The abbot went into the Queen's house. Berengère looked very drowned, he thought, in her great bed. One saw a sharp white oval floating in the black clouds which were her hair. She looked younger than any bride could be, childish, a child ill of a fever, wilful, querulous, miserable. All the time she listened to what Milo had to say her lips twitched, and her fingers plucked gold threads out of the cherubim on the coverlet. 'Kill the King of England? Kill my lord' Montferrat? Eh, they cannot kill him! Oh, oh, oh!'--she moaned shudderingly--'I would that they could! Then perhaps I should sleep o' nights.' Her strained eyes pierced him for an answer. What answer could he give? 'My news is authentic, Madame. I came at once, as my duty was, to your Grace, as to the proper person--' Here she sat right up in her bed, wide-eyed, all alight. 'Yes, yes, I am the proper person. I will do it, if no other can. Virgin Mary!'--she stretched her arms out, like one crucified--'Look at me. Am I worthy of this?' If she addressed the Virgin Mary her invitation was pointedly to the abbot, a less proper spectator. He did look, however, and pitied her deeply; at her lips dry with hatred, which should have been freshly kissed, at her drawn cheeks, into her amazed young heart: eh, God, he knew her loveworthy once, and now most pitiful. He had nothing to say; she went on breathless, gathering speed. 'He has spurned me whom he chose. He has left me on my wedding day. I have never seen him alone--do you heed me? never, never once. Ah, now, he has chosen for his minion: let her save him if she can. What have I to do with him? I am the daughter of a king; and what is he to me, who treats me so? If I am not to be mother of England, I am still daughter of Navarre. Let him die, let them kill him: what else can serve me now?' She fell back, and lay staring up at him. In every word she said there was sickening justice: what could Milo do? In his private mind he confirmed a suspicion--being still loyal to his King--that one and the same thing may be at one and the same time all black and all white. He did his best to put this strange case.