She put her hands before her eyes and endeavoured to settle her thoughts, to dismiss earthly matters and think only of God, but she could not put the King out of her heart. Her thoughts ran past her own death, and saw him lonely amidst his difficulties, without her aid to smooth over little frictions, without her company in his infrequent leisure, without her sympathy in his disappointments; in a thousand little ways he scarcely knew of she had been able to help him, and now there would be no one—no one to watch and notice and understand as she had done; she could not trust even Portland to do what she had done.
"God forgive me for this weakness," she murmured, in great distress. "God strengthen and make it easy for us both."
She rose and went to the window; she could see the black sky pierced here and there by a few stars as the clouds parted—nothing else.
On an instant the deep silence was rent by a clamour of sweet sound; the sharp strong pealing of church bells rang out over the sleeping city.
Mary knew that it was the village church of Kensington practising for Christmas; she sank into the window-seat and fixed her eyes on those few distant pale cold stars.
She could not steady her thoughts. Old memories, pictures of dead days, arose and disturbed her. She saw the sunlight on the red front of the house at Twickenham and the little roses growing over the brick, herself as a child playing in the garden, and the figure of her father standing by the sundial looking at her, as he had stood once on one of his rare visits—very handsome and tall and grave with long tasselled gloves in his hand, she saw the hayfields beyond St. James's and the summer-tanned labourers working there and a little girl in a blue gown asleep on a gathered sheaf and Lady Villiers pointing out the last swallow and how low it flew—so low that the light of the setting sun was over its back and it was like a thing of gold above the rough stubble—she saw pictures of The Hague—that beautiful town, and her own dear house, and the wood...
She remembered her presentiment, before William left for England, that they were looking at the wood together for the last time.
All over now, mere memory, and memory itself soon to end; she would never see the flowers again either in England or Holland; she had looked her last on blue sky and summer sun; she would never more go down to Chester to welcome the King home from the war; she would never again cut the sweet briar roses to place in the blue bowls at Hampton Court.
It frightened her that she thought so of these earthly things, that she could not detach her mind from the world. She endeavoured to fix her attention on the bells, and they seemed to shake into the words of an ancient hymn she had known as a child—
"O Lord, let Thou my spirit rise
From out this Press of turning Strife.
Let me look into Thy awful eyes
And draw from Thee Immortal Life."