LITMIR.BIZ

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"We women have many desperate moments in these bitter times. A good night, my lady."

      The Countess bent her proud blonde head and departed, and the Queen took up her beads and her silks and began again to work the bouquet of roses, lilies, and violets she was embroidering on the lid of the casket.

      A thoughtful and haughty expression clouded the delicate lines of her face, and this proud pensive look did not alter when the hangings that had scarcely fallen into place behind Lady Strafford were again lifted, and the King, unattended, and with an air of haste, came into her presence.

      "Has Strafford come?" she asked.

      "Not yet!" replied Charles, in an unsteady voice, "and I have begun to wish I had not sent for him."

      The Queen flung down her work and rose; the angry red of a deep passion stained her pallor.

      "Canst thou never be resolute?" she cried. "Wilt thou for ever hesitate and change and regret every action? My lord, I would sooner be dead than see this temper in thee."

      The King came and kissed her hand with a charming air of gallantry.

      "Sweet," he said, in self-justification, "it is a horrid thing to command a man into the hands of his enemies."

      "Thou knowest," returned Henriette Marie firmly, "that the Parliament and London both clamour for my lord and will not, by any means, be quiet until he appear. Thou knowest that we, that I, am in actual danger."

      "Hush, dear heart—speak not of our danger," interrupted Charles hastily, "lest it seemeth we sacrifice our servant, our friend, to bare fear."

      "Acquit thyself to thy conscience, Charles," she answered with limitless pride. "Art thou not the King? Must I remind thee of that as even now I had to remind my Lady Strafford?"

      "My lady here?" murmured the King.

      "Did you not meet her in your coming?"

      As she spoke Henriette Marie moved towards a mirror that hung in one corner, and looked at her reflection with unseeing eyes, then turned the same abstracted glance on to the King.

      The mirror was set in a deep border of embroidery which was framed in tortoise-shell, and the mellow colours of these, silks and shell, were softened into rosy dimness by the shaded light. This same glow was over the lovely figure of the Queen, her gown of ivory and amber tints, brightened into a knot of orange at her breast, and the pearls round her throat, and her soft, dark hair held no more lustre than the exquisite carnation of her fragile beauty. She seemed utterly removed from all that was commonplace, tumultuous, noisy, coarse, and Charles, gazing at her with his soul in his eyes, was spurred and stung, as always when he regarded his wife, with bitter anger that he was not allowed to follow the bright guidance of this lady, and live with her in rich happiness and peace adorned with every fine and costly art, with all the intellectual delicacies and luxurious refinements which so pleased them both.

      He loathed the English people who dragged him and even his adored wife into the clamorous atmosphere of intrigue and dissension, of controversy and riot.

      To Charles there was one God, one Church, one King, one right—the right of God as manifested in the King's right; all else was to him mere vexation, disloyalty, and blasphemy. The popular side of the questions now rending the nations he did not even consider; he stood absolutely, without compromise or doubt, by his own simple, unyielding, ardent belief that he was King by God's will, and above and beyond all laws.

      And his late impotency to enforce this view on his subjects had stirred his naturally gracious serene nature to deepest astonishment and anger. He was baffled, outraged, and inwardly humiliated, and he had already in his heart decided to be avenged on these gentlemen of the Commons whose clamours had so rudely broken his regal security, and on the stubborn English who had taken advantage of the rebellion of the Scots and his lack of money with which to defend himself, to force on him this hateful Parliament.

      And now, when he knew that Pym, the inspiration and leader of these unruly gentlemen, was daring to strike at his own especial friend—minister and favourite, the man who was at once his guide and mouthpiece—he was bewildered by his intense inner fury, and pride as well as justice made him regret that he had summoned the Earl to London.

      He gazed at the Queen where she stood in golden shadow, and these thoughts tormented him bitterly.

      He knew her mind; her temper was even more despotic than his, and armed force was the first and only weapon she would have ever used in dealing with the people; her counsels were ever for the high hand, the haughty command, the merciless sword, and always the King hearkened to her. But his nature was more subtle, involved, and secretive than hers, and he knew better than she did the growing strength of the forces opposed to him; therefore he had often endeavoured to cope with his difficulties after a fashion she called irresolute and unstable.

      The Queen broke the heavy silence.

      "Strafford will come and we will protect him," she said; "that is enough."

      "Nay, not enough," replied Charles, "for I must be avenged on these men who seek to touch my lord."

      "Hadst thou hearkened to me," she murmured in a melancholy voice, "thou hadst been avenged on all these long since."

      "Ay, Mary," cried the King earnestly, "we are not in a realm as loyal and steadfast as France, but rule a country that hath become a very hive of sedition, discontent, and treason, and it is well to tread cautiously."

      "Caution is not a kingly virtue," said Henriette Marie, with that same sad sweetness of demeanour that was so exquisite a cloak for reproof.

      "Trust me to act as is best for thee and for our sons," replied Charles firmly. "Trust me to so acquit myself to God as to be worthy of thy love."

      The Queen regarded him with a wise little smile, then pulled a toy watch of diamonds from the lace at her bosom and glanced at it with eyes that flashed a little.

      "With quick riding and sharp relays, my lord might almost be here," she remarked.

      Charles sank into the great chair with arms by the window, and bent his gaze on the floor. His whole figure had a drooping and fatigued look; he mechanically fingered the deep points of lace edging his cambric cuffs.

      Henriette Marie dropped the watch back behind the knot of orange velvet on her breast, and her glance, that was so quick and keen behind the misty softness that veiled it, travelled rapidly over her husband's person.

      She noted the grey hairs in his love-locks, the lines of anxiety across his brow and round his mouth, his unnatural pallor, the nervous twitching of his lips. He was the dearest thing on earth to her, but she had been married to him nearly twenty years and she knew his weakness, his faults, too well to any longer regard him as that Prince of romance which he had at first appeared to her. His figure, as she looked at him now, seemed to her strangely tragical; she could have wept for this man who leant on her when she should have leant on him, this man whom she would have despised if she had not loved.

      "Holy Virgin," she said passionately to herself, "give him strength and me courage."

      She went to her table and began to put away her work. The King raised his narrowed wistful eyes and said abruptly—

      "Supposing the Earl doth not come? We are as likely to be hounded from Whitehall as His Grace from Lambeth if my lord disappoints the people."

      "He will come," said Henriette Marie, delicately putting away her beads and silks in a tortoise-shell box lined with blue satin and redolent of English lavender.

      Even as she spoke and before she had turned the silver key in the casket, her page had entered with the momentous news for which they both, in their different fashion, waited.

      My Lord Strafford was in the audience chamber, all in a reek from hard riding.

      They went down together, the King and Queen, and found the dark Earl, in boots and cloak still muddied, waiting for them.

      "My

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