The low murmur of talk rose and fell; great ladies, powdered and patched, swept their furbelows through the crowd and swayed their fans, chattering lightly of a hundred things; great lords bowed and smiled and took snuff and cursed the king, in their hearts, for keeping them waiting. A pair of lovers, two young things, were cooing in a window recess, as indifferent to the public as a pair of turtledoves, and Betty looked at them with dull eyes. The wait seemed to be for hours, and the heated atmosphere and the flutter of talk almost suffocated her. She looked up and saw the door open and her father coming out of the king’s closet, pleased, smiling, courteous to all, greeting them right and left, bowing here, extending a hand there. Betty felt that he saw her, but he averted his face and she stepped back into the window recess near at hand and opened the sash; she could not breathe. While she stood there his Grace of Devonshire came up and had a few words with Lady Russell.
“Is there any hope?” her ladyship asked sadly, with a meaning glance aside at the young figure in its plain black garb.
His grace shook his head.
“I see none,” he replied, very low; “there has been such a demand for examples; the people are so tired of these conspiracies, and they are like to class Clancarty with the worst. You know the king, that reserve of his betrays nothing, but I think I never saw him less inclined to mercy.”
Lady Russell’s face became intensely grave.
“I shall do all I can,” she said, “my utmost. Poor young thing, her heart is breaking!”
The duke cast a look of deep concern toward Lady Clancarty and shook his head again. The next moment he smiled, as she turned to them, smiled and kissed her hand as an open sign of his sympathy and support. She said nothing; she only looked searchingly into his eyes and her lips quivered. Would it be much longer?
The talk rose and fell; some woman laughed, the shallow cackling laugh that comes from the empty heart and the empty head; the crackling of thorns under a pot.
An usher bowed before Lady Russell and she held out her hand to Betty. The duke smiled again reassuringly; and the two women walked slowly through the throng, passed in at a low doorway, and in a moment there was stillness.
They had entered a low-ceiled room, lighted by one large window; it was plainly but richly furnished and near a table strewn with papers stood a small, thin man. He was dressed in black velvet, with a ruffled cravat of Mechlin and a star on his breast; he wore a great curled periwig. Insignificant in size but with a wonderful majesty of bearing; the king of three kingdoms and the stadt-holder of Hollander—William of Orange.