"Thou knowest," returned Henriette Marie firmly, "that the Parliament and London both clamour for my lord and will not, by any means, be quiet until he appear. Thou knowest that we, that I, am in actual danger."
"Hush, dear heart—speak not of our danger," interrupted Charles hastily, "lest it seemeth we sacrifice our servant, our friend, to bare fear."
"Acquit thyself to thy conscience, Charles," she answered with limitless pride. "Art thou not the King? Must I remind thee of that as even now I had to remind my Lady Strafford?"
"My lady here?" murmured the King.
"Did you not meet her in your coming?"
As she spoke Henriette Marie moved towards a mirror that hung in one corner, and looked at her reflection with unseeing eyes, then turned the same abstracted glance on to the King.
The mirror was set in a deep border of embroidery which was framed in tortoise-shell, and the mellow colours of these, silks and shell, were softened into rosy dimness by the shaded light. This same glow was over the lovely figure of the Queen, her gown of ivory and amber tints, brightened into a knot of orange at her breast, and the pearls round her throat, and her soft, dark hair held no more lustre than the exquisite carnation of her fragile beauty. She seemed utterly removed from all that was commonplace, tumultuous, noisy, coarse, and Charles, gazing at her with his soul in his eyes, was spurred and stung, as always when he regarded his wife, with bitter anger that he was not allowed to follow the bright guidance of this lady, and live with her in rich happiness and peace adorned with every fine and costly art, with all the intellectual delicacies and luxurious refinements which so pleased them both.
He loathed the English people who dragged him and even his adored wife into the clamorous atmosphere of intrigue and dissension, of controversy and riot.
To Charles there was one God, one Church, one King, one right—the right of God as manifested in the King's right; all else was to him mere vexation, disloyalty, and blasphemy. The popular side of the questions now rending the nations he did not even consider; he stood absolutely, without compromise or doubt, by his own simple, unyielding, ardent belief that he was King by God's will, and above and beyond all laws.
And his late impotency to enforce this view on his subjects had stirred his naturally gracious serene nature to deepest astonishment and anger. He was baffled, outraged, and inwardly humiliated, and he had already in his heart decided to be avenged on these gentlemen of the Commons whose clamours had so rudely broken his regal security, and on the stubborn English who had taken advantage of the rebellion of the Scots and his lack of money with which to defend himself, to force on him this hateful Parliament.