Far
from listening to the King's intended rebuke, as what the levity
of her conduct had justly deserved, she extenuated, nay, defended
as a harmless frolic, that which she was accused of. She denied,
indeed, with many a pretty form of negation, that she had
directed Nectabanus absolutely to entice the knight farther than
the brink of the Mount on which he kept watch--and, indeed, this
was so far true, that she had not designed Sir Kenneth to be
introduced into her tent--and then, eloquent in urging her own
defence, the Queen was far more so in pressing upon Richard the
charge of unkindness, in refusing her so poor a boon as the life
of an unfortunate knight, who, by her thoughtless prank, had been
brought within the danger of martial law. She wept and sobbed
while she enlarged on her husband's obduracy on this score, as a
rigour which had threatened to make her unhappy for life,
whenever she should reflect that she had given, unthinkingly, the
remote cause for such a tragedy. The vision of the slaughtered
victim would have haunted her dreams--nay, for aught she knew,
since such things often happened, his actual spectre might have
stood by her waking couch.
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