The Stadtholder broke open the dispatch, glanced down the close lines of Spanish, and turned instantly to his pale wife, whose eyes were fixed on him with a piteous intensity.
"The French have abandoned Flanders!" he cried; "their troops are pouring into Germany—the States are safe, thank God! thank God——"
CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT ENTERPRISE
All difficulties were overcome. Louis, angry at the English King's rejection of his advices, and perhaps hoping that his great enemy would run on disaster in his audacious undertaking, or perhaps believing that it was now too late in the year for any such expedition, had suddenly diverted his troops into Germany, where in a few days he had taken every fort along the Rhine; successes celebrated with great pomp in Paris, but worthless indeed to Louis should William accomplish what he was now free to attempt, and bring England out of her shackles into the alliance against France.
The Prince's preparations were complete; his Declaration had been published and circulated in England by the arts of his friends, his ships and troops were ready, even to the embarking of the soldiery, and he himself had to-day taken his farewell audience of the States; for now the south-west wind had changed, and the great fleet gathered at Goree was free to sail.
Mary, in the chilly autumn garden of the 'huis ten bosch,' waited his return. Four times a day she went to public prayers, but not all her ardent faith could quell the tumult in her soul; her anxieties were not to be repressed, even at the communion table, which added to her distress, her self-reproach, her uneasiness.
She walked up and down the bare alleys, the hard gravel paths, with a quick step, between the newly-turned flower-beds, the late yellowing plants, and stiff evergreens.
The violet St. Michael's daisies were brown and withered on their stems, the last roses had fallen, and the carp been removed from the fish basin, where the water lay frost-bound under a thin covering of ice; there was no sun to cast a shadow from the finger of the grey sundial, and the sky was obscured with low, floating, changing clouds; a little wind brought the salt pure air from the sea-coast and stirred Mary's bright locks inside her miniver hood.
As she was pacing her most familiar and beloved walk, the little alley at the end of the garden, sheltered by interlacing trees now bare, the sound of a footstep brought her to turn with a glad expectancy.