Bulstrode pursued: "What--would you think of Gresthaven--if in order to save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter your decision--he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as surely betraying your good faith?" Here she looked keenly through him--read him--then waited a second before intensely exclaiming: "Gresthaven--_what have you done_?" His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. He did not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in their own minds. "Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter _what_ reason, she had only changed her _own_ mind!" "In five minutes," he said bravely--"your Majesty will be at Westboro' Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which followed us from London." With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to her in what part of England she was. Bulstrode had put his hand out before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open window. "Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared ... dared?" ... "To save your Majesty? Well, it _was_ hard!" he acknowledged practically. "Harder than you will ever believe. I may say that no decision was ever more difficult to make. To be so trusted by you, and to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue was a warrant for any treachery." "Great heavens!" she exclaimed. "Who made _you_ judge of my actions, who gave _you_ leave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust you--what a fool! You have spoiled my life!" she accused him--"You have taken from me everything in the world." If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face turned from her for some few seconds. "I have certainly established a precedent for myself," he mused with humor. "_I_ can never run away with a woman now--never." Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing. She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise among the incoherences that she called him friend! As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more ventured to speak. "I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty. But when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform----" She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed incredulously.