You invited me to speak to you as a friend; so I have
done, so I do. I apologise that I have allowed sadness, even for a moment,
to trouble the harmony-the sweetness--of our conversation.
QUEEN. Pray, do not apologise! It has been a very great privilege; I beg
that you will go on! Tell me--you spoke of bereavement--I wish you would
tell me more--about your wife.
(_The sudden request touches some latent chord; and it is with genuine
emotion that he answers_.)
LORD B. Ah! My wife! To her I owed everything.
QUEEN. She was devoted to you, wasn't she?
LORD B. I never read the depth of her devotion-till after her death. Then,
Madam--this I have told to nobody but yourself--then I found among her
papers--addressed "to my dear husband"--a message, written only a few days
before her death, with a hand shaken by that nerve-racking and fatal
malady which she endured so patiently--begging me to marry again.
(_The Queen is now really crying, and finds speech difficult._)
QUEEN. And you, you--? Dear Lord Beaconsfield; did you mean--had you ever
meant----?
LORD B. I did not then, Madam; nor have I ever done so since. It is enough
if I allow myself--to love.
QUEEN. Oh, yes, yes; I understand--better than others would. For that has
always been my own feeling.
LORD B. In the history of my race, Madam, there has been a great tradition
of faithfulness between husbands and wives. For the hardness of our
hearts, we are told, Moses permitted us to give a writing of divorcement.
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