Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/48

 In a word, Queen Anéli is hasty, she is impatient. And, in addition to that, she is uncertain. You can never tell beforehand, by any theory of probabilities based on past experience, what will or will not, on any given occasion, cause her to smile or frown. The thing she expressed a desire for yesterday, may offend her to-day. The suggestion that put her in a temper yesterday, to-day she may welcome with joyous enthusiasm. You must approach her gingerly, tentatively; you must feel your ground.

"Oh, most dread Sovereign," said Florimond, "if you won't fly out at me, I would submit, humbly, that you'd better not drive this afternoon in your open carriage, in your sweet new frock, for, unless all signs fail, it's going to rain like everything."

She didn't fly out at him exactly; but she retorted, succinctly, with a peremptory gesture, "No, it's not going to rain," as who should say, "It daren't." And she drove in her open carriage, and spoiled her sweet new frock. "Not to speak of my sweet new top-hat," sighs Florimond, who attended her; "the only Lincoln and Bennett top-hat in the whole length and breadth of Monterosso."

She is hasty, she is uncertain; and then she is intense. She talks in italics, she feels in superlatives; she admits no comparative degree, no emotional half-tones. When she is not ecstatically happy, she is desperately miserable; wonders why she was ever born into this worst of all possible worlds; wishes she were dead; and even sometimes drops dark hints of meditated suicide. When she is not in the brightest of affable humours, she is in the blackest of cross ones. She either loves a thing, or she simply can't endure it;—the thing may be a town, a musical composition, a perfume, or a person. She either loves you, or she simply can't endure you; and she's very apt to love you and to cease to love you