"Your Excellency is scarcely polite. But I understand. Even my rank doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you--still we should have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend." Bulstrode fell a step back. Before he could take in the curious honors that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on: "You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me." Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words, the woman's part in it. After all it was scarcely important whom, in error, she believed him to be. In a strange fashion, through some trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's stead--impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely, Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as he himself was fast becoming. The woman--the woman was all that mattered. She was a Queen then? A Queen! And he had so naïvely ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of _lèse-majesté_--that she, poor thing, attributed his _sans gêne_ to her fallen state! Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are! What royalty could she be? And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be? The King's friend--well, so he was--so he must be in spite of his quick pity for the lovely creature--in spite of chivalry and the trust she displayed. But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to accomplish--how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life? His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the platform. There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the Western express. _That_ later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the real accomplice to the eloping lady. Bulstrode argued that, should he declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and lose him his cause--There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his rôle in earnest and play it as well as he might. He had never sat alone in a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face. "Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her hand. "Thanks, mon ami! I shall not have my title long, and I shall, I suppose, miss it with other things."