"I am not his sovereign, and he is no vassal of mine." Eleanor smiled coldly. "He is an Englishman." "You play with words," answered Beatrix, as she would have spoken to an equal. "Take care!" They faced each other, and on the instant the fierce pride of royalty sprang up, as at an insult. But Beatrix was brave--a sick girl against the Queen of France. "If you are not his sovereign, you are not mine," she said. "And were you ten times my Queen, there can be no fence of royalty between you and me from this hour, or if there is, you are doubly playing with the meaning of what your lips say. Are you to be a woman to me, a woman, at one moment, and a sovereign to me, a subject, at the next? Which is it to be?" "A woman, then, if nothing more. And as a woman, I tell you that I will have Gilbert Warde for myself, body and soul." The girl's eyes lightened suddenly. Men said that in her mother's veins there had run some of the Conqueror's blood, and his great oath sprang to her lips as she answered:-- "And by the splendour of God, I tell you that you shall not!" "Then it is a duel between us," the Queen said, and she turned to go. "To death," answered the girl, as her head sank back upon the pillows, pitifully weak and tired in her aching body, but dauntless in spirit. Eleanor crossed the carpeted floor of the tent slowly toward the door. She had not made four steps when she stood still, looking before her. A great shame of herself came upon her for what she had said--the loyal, generous shame of the strong who in anger has been overbearing with the weak. She stood still, and she felt as an honest man does who has struck a fallen enemy in unreasoning rage. It was the second time that she had fallen so low in her own eyes, and her own scorn of herself was more than she could bear. Quickly she came back to Beatrix's side. The girl lay quite still, with parted lips and closed eyes that had great black shadows under them. Her small white hands twitched now and then spasmodically, but she seemed hardly to breathe. Eleanor knelt beside her and propped her up higher, thrusting one arm under the pillow while she fanned her with the other hand. "Beatrix!" she called softly.