He smiled at her way of opening the conversation, but Henry thought that she was laughing at him and grew redder than ever. Not deigning to answer, he picked up the ball and served it over the penthouse to himself, striking it back cleverly enough. The Queen laughed again as he kept his face resolutely turned from her. "Will you teach me to play, if I come down to you?" she asked, looking at the back of his head. "It is no game for women," answered the boy, rudely, and still keeping the ball up. "Will you give me a lesson, Master Gilbert?" The laughing eyes were suddenly grave as they turned to the young Englishman, the smiling lips grew tender, and the voice was gentle. Without turning round, Henry felt the change and knew that she was looking at his friend; he served the ball with a vicious stroke that brought it back too high for him. Without turning his head to see where it had rolled, the angry boy walked off, picked up his tunic, which lay on the turf at a little distance, threw it over his arm, jammed his pointed cap upon his head with his other hand, and departed in offended dignity. The Queen smiled as she looked after him, but did not laugh again. "Will you teach me to play tennis?" she asked of Gilbert, who was hesitating as to what he should do. "You have not answered me yet." "I shall at all times do your Grace's bidding," answered Gilbert, inclining his head a little and making a gesture with the hand that held his cap as if to put himself at her disposal. "At all times?" she asked quietly. Gilbert looked up quickly, fearing lest he might be tricked into a promise he did not understand, and he did not answer at once. But she would not repeat the question. "Wait," she said, before he spoke. "I am coming down." With an almost imperceptible gesture, like a greeting, she disappeared. Gilbert began to walk up and down, his hands behind him, his eyes on the ground, and he did not see the tennis-ball which Henry had lost until he almost stumbled over it. The boy's words had roused an entirely new train of ideas in his mind. Perhaps no man could be so free from vanity as not to be pleased, even against his will, with the thought that the most beautiful living woman, and she a queen, was in love with him. But whatever satisfaction of that sort Gilbert may have felt was traversed in an opposite direction by the cool sense of his own indifference. And besides, that was a simple age in which sins were called by their own names and were regarded with a sort of semi-religious, respectful abhorrence by most honest gentlemen; and what was only the general expression of a narrow but high morality had been branded upon Gilbert's soul during the past months in letters that were wounds by the ever-present memory of his own mother's shame.