No news came.
She dismissed the Court presently and went to her rooms; it was late, long past ten o'clock, yet she would not go to bed, but sat in her cabinet writing to the King. Sheet after sheet she covered with news, hopes, fears, love, entreaties for God's blessings—all her heart indeed laid out before her one confidant.
The candlelight hurt her eyes, weaker of late with work and tears, and at last she folded up the letter unfinished. The express did not go till the morning, and she hoped that by then she might have the long-looked-for news from Ireland.
When she rose from her desk she was utterly tired, yet could not rest—there was so much to do.
Her letter to Admiral Evertgen, which she had written with great pains in Dutch, had been returned as unintelligible, and now she must write again in English, which language the Admiral understood perfectly, it seemed. There was the question of the command of the Fleet on her mind; Russell and Monmouth had been met at Canterbury by the news of the disaster of Beachy Head, and now were back in London, hot against Torrington; Mary feared that the King would be vexed with her for having let them leave the council, yet she must again send some one to the Fleet, now without a commander. Her choice had fallen on Pembroke, who was an admiral, and Devonshire, whom she could trust, and thereupon Caermarthen had taken umbrage, and it had been a weary work of tact and sweetness to prove to him that he was indispensable in London and could not be spared—yet perhaps she had been wrong, and she should have let him go.
All these lesser anxieties crowded on her weary soul, aching with the desire for news from the King, and, as she left her cabinet and came into her bedchamber, a profound melancholy overthrew her gallant spirit.
Only two of her ladies were up—Madame de Marsac and Madame Nienhuys. Mary told them to go to bed, and cast herself into the window-seat and pulled the curtains apart from before the windows open on the warm soft night.
"It is Your Majesty who should go to bed," said Madame Nienhuys firmly.
Mary shook her head.
"I cannot. I cannot sleep until I get a letter."