"Will you answer a fair question fairly, Master Gilbert?" he asked, looking his friend in the eyes. Gilbert had fallen into the habit of treating him like a man, as most people did, excepting the Queen, and gravely nodded an answer. "Do you not think that the Queen of France is the most beautiful woman in the world?" "Yes," answered Gilbert, without a smile, and without the slightest hesitation. The boy's eyes, that were so near together, gleamed and fixed themselves in rising anger, while a dark red flush mounted from his bare throat to his cheeks, and from his cheeks to his forehead. "Then you love her?" he asked fiercely, and the words were thick on his lips. Gilbert was not easily surprised, but the conclusion was so sudden and unexpected that he stared for a moment in blank amazement before he smiled. "I?" he exclaimed. "I love the Queen? I should as soon think of coveting the King's crown!" Henry looked into Gilbert's face a moment longer, and the blood slowly subsided from his own. "I can see that you are in earnest," he said, picking up the ball at his feet, "though I cannot see why a man should not covet a king's crown as well as a king's wife." He struck the ball. "You are young," said Gilbert, "to ride atilt through all the Ten Commandments at once." "Young!" exclaimed the boy, keeping the ball up. "So was David when he killed the giant! So was Hercules when he strangled the serpents, as you told me the other day. Young!" he cried a second time, with forcibly concentrated contempt. "You should know, Master Gilbert, that a Plantagenet of thirteen years is the match of any other man of twenty. As I can beat you at tennis, though you are six years older than I, so I can beat you in other matters, and with the Queen herself, even though she is half in love with you already, as all the court is saying; and she shall belong to me some day, though I have to slay that dish-faced prayer-master of a king to get her." Gilbert was no more morally timid than he was physically a coward, but he looked round with some anxiety as the boy uttered his outrageous boast.