The violins played a gavotte. Mary sat motionless, listening to the subdued volume of talk by which she was surrounded, and thinking of that far-distant day when she had danced with her husband in this very room—a week or so before her marriage.
She recalled how she had enjoyed dancing, and wondered to think how dead that passion was.
"I used to think," she thought, "that a dance measure would lure me from my grave, and now the gayest melody written will not move me."
She gazed over her shoulder at her reflection in the tall mirror against the wall to the left; she beheld a fair image, in yellow silk and diamonds, with a very proud carriage. A Queen, young and beautiful—the description sounded like a favoured creature from one of those fairy tales she used to read; she knew the reality—a tired woman, unutterably lonely, estranged from all her family, childless, and forlorn.
Queen Catherine came to take her leave.
"No news yet from Ireland?" she asked, in her awkward English.
Mary courteously rose before the woman who had been Queen in Whitehall when she was a child.
"None, Madam."
The Queen Dowager hesitated a moment, then said—
"I have not failed of late to put up prayers for His Majesty's good success."