"Ah yes," said Lamoral Egmont.
"And Hoogstraaten?"
"That—I do not know."
They parted affectionately, and William returned into his palace which, for all the magnificence and luxury and splendour and moving to and fro of servitors, was somehow lonely and desolate.
The Prince mounted the gorgeous stairs slowly, with his eyes downcast; as he gained the first landing he raised them, to see the figure of his wife.
She was going up the stairs before him, half-crouching against the wall and dragging at the tapestries; her heavy handsome skirts trailed loosely after her; her white head-cloth was soiled and disarranged; she was sucking a stick of sweetmeat, and her pale flaccid face clouded with an instant expression of dislike and annoyance touched with fear when she observed her husband.
He glanced away, and turned across the landing to his cabinet; she crept on up the stairs, muttering to herself, and looking back at him with a half-snarl like a malignant animal.
So now the Prince and his wife met and passed.
CHAPTER III
THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PRINCESS OF
ORANGE
Duprès—the skryer, alchemist, and religious refugee whom the Prince of Orange was sheltering—had arranged the two chambers allotted to him as half shop, half laboratory, in the fashion of Vanderlinden, the Elector Augustus' alchemist and Duprès' former master.