Both of them had tears in their eyes; obeying a mutual impulse, they bent and kissed each other on the cheek.
Elisabeth came with Margaret to the outer door of her apartments, and there gave her in charge to one of the ushers to be conducted from the palace with all courtesy.
Before she returned to her chamber she asked if His Highness was at leisure.
She was told that he was deeply engaged with his secretary on the questions to be put before the Council when he returned to Whitehall to-morrow.
Lady Newcastle returned to an alien London, and sat down in her forlorn and ancient splendour to write to her beloved lord in Antwerp, where he lodged in the house of the late King's painter, Sir Peter Rubens.
As the shadows fell over the city, over the fresh countryside, over the river, as the night moths came out and the early stocks and pinks in the gardens at Hampton Palace filled the air with sweetness, His Highness still toiled in his cabinet, and Elisabeth Claypole still sat at the open window of her room with folded hands and thoughtful eyes gazing across the twilight.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LADY ELISABETH
When the Marchioness of Newcastle, after waiting long and vainly, returned at length to Hampton Court and asked for the Lady Elisabeth, she was told that the Protector's daughter was too ill to see any one.