"I ask it of you," he said gravely; "for more hangs on this than I dare think."
"Sure, you need not fear the Prince," she returned, "if he had the most wicked will in the world—the difficulties in his way are unsurmountable."
"France," he replied, "must make them so."
On that he took his leave, and left Basilea with more busy thoughts than had been hers for some while since.
She returned to the window-seat, propped her chin on her palm, and looked down the street. She was a pretty seeming woman, slender, dusky brown in the hair and eyes, of a just height and proportion, and her person was shown to advantage by the plain French style of her gown and ringlets, which had a graceful simplicity wholly wanting in the stiff fashions prevailing in England and the Low Countries.
Her window looked upon an end of the Buitenhof, one of the two great squares that formed the centre of The Hague so admired by strangers; it was planted with lime trees, now past their flowering time, but still fragrant and softly green in the gentle air of July.
A great number of people of both sexes, finely dressed, were passing up and down, on foot, on horseback, and in little open chariots and sedans. Basilea noticed many unmistakeably English, Scotch, and French of varying degrees of qualities—soldiers, divines, gentlemen, and women mingling with the crowd, hastening past with intent faces or lounging with idle glances at each other in hopes to detect a friend or patron.
She opened the window and leaned out so that she could see the Buitenhof with the straight lines and arches of the government buildings of the States, the trees that shaded the great fish-pond called the Vyver, and the open square where the carriages passed on their way to the fashionable promenade of the Voorhout and Toorviveld.
Among all the varying figures that caught her glance was that of a tall man in the garb of an English seaman—red breeches, a tarred coat, a cocked hat with his captain's colours, and a heavy sword.
She noticed him first because he stopped to ask directions of two passers-by, English also, and because he was, even among so many, of a fine and showy appearance.