"You neither sleep nor eat," protested the Dutch lady.
"I am very well," smiled Mary sadly. "Go to bed, like a good creature——"
"Indeed, Madam, I will not leave you in this state."
"Have you been with me so long that you become disobedient? Very well, put out some of the candles—the light hurts my eyes."
Basilea de Marsac rose softly and extinguished all the candles, save those on the mantelshelf. The large rich chamber was full of grateful shadow. Mary's yellow gown gleamed secretively like gold through a veil.
She took the diamonds from her neck and arms and gave them to Madame Nienhuys. She pulled off her rings slowly, and dropped them into her lap, looking the while out on to the July dark, that seemed to her to be painted with the menacing forces of war, flags, banners hanging bloody to their poles, the hot, smoking mouths of cannon, the glitter of armour through the dust—her husband's army and her father's struggling together to the death.
She rose so suddenly that the rings fell and rolled all over the floor.
"I think I will go to bed after all," she said faintly.
They undressed her in silence and left her wide-eyed in the great crimson bed, canopied and plumed and enriched with the arms of England.
When they had gone she lay for a while quite still. There was no moon, and she could not distinguish a single object in the room, and only uncertainly the dim spaces of the window.