Anne was silenced. The Countess, like William, could overawe her if she chose. The Princess shuddered with suppressed passion and, as always when defeated, hurried from the room.
The Countess seated herself, pale with distaste; such scenes as these, and worse, were but too common now. Anne had threatened Count John with a dinner-knife, and again and again wounded her attendants with any weapon she could lay her hands on; Rénèe bore a bruise on her forehead where the Princess had struck her with a wine-bottle.
"She is mad," said Magdalena, with the indignant frankness of youth. "She should be put away; indeed she should."
"I think she is mad," admitted Rénèe slowly and humbly. She had so completely assumed the burden of Anne's life that she felt as if Anne's faults were her own; she rose now to follow the Princess.
"Stay here, you poor child," said the Countess of Nassau tenderly.
Rénèe thanked her affectionately, but hastened after her mistress.
She dared not leave Anne alone; it was always before her, a constant terror, that Anne might escape to Cologne and utterly disgrace the Prince; and she felt intensely the responsibility of being the only one who knew how low Anne had descended, even in the days of her prosperity.
CHAPTER VI
THE PRINCE AT BAY
In that July, William moved to Strasburg, steadily and boldly preparing his advance against the Spaniards, his daring inroad into the Netherlands. He had now no allies save his brother Louis, who, in desperate want of money, with mutinous troops, was using all his brilliant audacity and resource to keep his men together in Friesland, where his barren victory of Heiliger Lee had been followed by no fruits save what little money he could wring from the Abbots of Wittewerum and Heiliger Lee and the forced supplies obtained from the inhabitants of the district.
And against this force of ill-disciplined, ill-fed, mutinous, and ill-equipped troops, held together by one man's courage and influence, Alva himself was marching with fifteen thousand of his veteran regiments.