“Whatever pleases you pleases me,” the Countess answered with a frank smile.

“And do you know, Sir Aymer,” said the Queen, who was in a happy mood, “that the Countess of Clare had also proposed leaving us for Craigston Castle . . . and, indeed, upon the very morning you had fixed to go?”

“What rare fortune to have met her on the way,” said Aymer.

“Greater fortune, think you, than to be with her here at Windsor?”

The Countess looked at her mistress in blank surprise.

“Could there be greater fortune than to be where Your Majesty is in presence?” Aymer asked.

“Where she is in presence at this particular moment, you mean?” taking Beatrix’s hand.

“Your Majesty is hardly fair to Sir Aymer or to me,” said the Countess quickly.  “You draw his scanty compliments from him like an arrow from a wound—­hurting him all the while.”

The Queen laughed.  “If all Sir Aymer’s wounds hurt him no more, he is likely to know little pain.”

“I know he is French-bred and a courtier,” Beatrix answered.

“As you told me once before in Pontefract,” De Lacy observed.

“And as I am very apt to tell you again when you are presumptuous and flattering.”

“Henceforth I shall be neither.”

“Charming, Sir Aymer, charming . . . if you could.”

“I can.”

“Till you meet another woman.”

“It is not in the other woman that my danger lies.”

Beatrix frowned, and the Queen laughed.

“The Countess seems to know your failings, Sir Aymer,” she said, “and may be this is a good time for you to know them, too.  Nay, Beatrix, you need not accompany me. . .  I am going to the Chapel.  Do you take Sir Aymer in hand and bring him out of his French habits, since you do not like them.  For my part, I think them very charming.”

“Surely she loves you,” said De Lacy, when the Queen had gone.

The Countess gave him her shoulder.

“She takes a queer way to show it then,” she retorted, her foot beating a tattoo on the stones.

He smothered a laugh.  “Shall we walk?” he asked.

He got a shrug and a louder tattoo.

“Since the Queen has left me to your tender mercies,” she said coldly, “I am at your service.”

They walked in silence; he smiling; she stern-eyed and face straight to the fore.

“Does it occur to you, my lady,” he said after a while, “that you are a bit unjust?”

The small head lifted higher . . . then presently, with rising inflection:  “Unjust—­to whom?”

“To the Queen.”

“I am sorry.”

“And unjust to me also.”

No answer—­only a faint toss of the ruddy tresses.

“And to me also,” he repeated.

She surveyed him ignoringly—­and turned away, eyebrows lifted.

De Lacy smiled and waited.

Presently she gave him a quick, sidelong glance.  He was gazing idly toward the river. . .  Again she looked . . . and again—­each time a trifle more deliberately. . .  Finally she faced him.