The Queen's eyes flashed with something of her husband's look when fronted with disaster.
"We will to London," she said—"there to face these misfortunes."
CHAPTER V
A WOMAN'S STRENGTH
The council of nine was sitting at Whitehall waiting for news from the English Fleet, which, under command of Lord Torrington, had sailed out from Plymouth to meet the French.
The Queen sat at the head of the table, as usual silent and as usual watchful; at her right hand Lord Caermarthen, at her left Lord Devonshire, the others along the table, and at the foot Sir John Lowther.
The room was very handsome: the walls of varied-coloured tapestry, the cornices of gilt wood, and the floor covered with rugs from Persia. Through the tall, majestic window might be seen a view of housetops and a little turret with a bell clear against a sky of flaming summer blue.
Mary was seated in a heavy chair with crimson cushions; she wore a violet dress of stiff damask satin and a petticoat flounced with lace; her arms were covered to the wrist with ruffles of muslin, and she held a long chicken skin fan with ivory mounts and an emerald in the handle; her shortsighted and narrowed eyes dwelt anxiously and critically on the faces of these men in whose hands she, and England, lay.
Facing her, Sir John Lowther, commonplace, courtly, agitated, was stabbing the polished table with a broken quill; to his left sat Edward Russell, impatient, blond, swaggering; to his right, Pembroke, gentle, hesitating, reserved. Godolphin, thin and hectic, was, as ever, mute and self-effacing; his companion was the restless, feverish, and volatile Monmouth, extravagantly dressed and fiery in manner.
Opposite him sat the gloomy honourable Nottingham, and another man, an object of peculiar dislike and suspicion both to the King and Queen, John Churchill, recently created Earl of Marlborough.