Sunderland could not gainsay him. In his own heart he felt a curious chill of apathy, as if it was nearing the end; the very sunshine without, falling so placidly on thatch and flowering tree, looked strangely remote. It seemed a long time to Robert Spencer since he had been at leisure to notice the mysterious light of spring. He laughed also, but with a softer note than the King had used.
"Rest is good after labour," he said irrelevantly.
William was also looking out of the window at fields and clouds.
"God alone knoweth if I am damned or saved," he remarked strongly; "but I have done His will as it was revealed to me."
Sunderland glanced at the Calvinist, who in those words had declared his religion. His own creeds were very different; but both men, now at the end, found themselves on much the same level.
Neither spoke again till they reached the courtyard of Whitehall, when the King remarked, with an air of disgust, on the fog of smoke that overhung the city.
As he dismounted from the coach he paused and glanced round the gentlemen; for the first time in his life he ignored my Lord Portland, but, with a delicacy that Sunderland was quick to notice, he equally ignored Albemarle, and passed into the palace leaning on the arm of Monsieur de Zulestein.
CHAPTER XI
THE KING'S HUMILIATION
Everything had been in vain. Harley pressed his narrow triumph, and the King, after a bitter struggle, consented to let the Dutch soldiers go and to retain the kingship, though he had drawn up a passionate farewell speech to the ungrateful parliament, and shown it to Somers, Sunderland, and Marlborough, now the governor of the little Duke of Gloucester, the heir to the throne.