'No; for I have passed my word.'
'Then reward her very fully,' the Lady Mary commended, and the Queen
answered--
'No, for that is against my conscience. What have I to fear now that I
be Queen?'
Mary shrugged her squared shoulders.
'Where is your Latin,' she said, 'with its _nulla dies felix_--call no
day fortunate till it be ended.'
'I will set another text against that,' she said, 'and that from holy
sayings--that _justus ab aestimatione non timebit_.'
'Well,' Mary answered, 'you will make your bed how you will. But I think
you would better have learned of these maids how to steer a course than
of your Magister and the Signor Plutarchus.'
The Queen did not answer her, save by begging her to read the King's
letter to his Holiness.
'And surely,' she said, 'if I had never read in the noble Romans I had
never had the trick of tongue to gar the King do so much of what I
will.'
'Why, God help you,' her step-daughter said. 'Pray you may never come to
repent it.'