“But for that poisonous woman, I should have, gone last year,” she told herself, interrupted in her cogitations by the appearance of her maid.
“The train your Grace we shall miss it....”
“Nonsense!” the duchess answered following, leaving the flowers alone again to their subtle exhalations.
“I’m glad I’m in a Basket!”
“I have no water. I cannot reach the water.”
“Life’s bound to be uncertain when you haven’t got your roots!”
XIV
On a long-chair with tired, closed eyes lay the Queen. Although spared from henceforth the anxiety of her son’s morganatic marriage, yet, now that his destiny was sealed, she could not help feeling perhaps he might have done better. The bride’s lineage was nothing to boast of—over her great-great-grandparents, indeed, in the year 17—it were gentler to draw a veil—while, for the rest, disingenuous, undistinguished, more at home in the stables than in a drawing-room, the Queen much feared that she and her future daughter-in-law would scarcely get on.
Yes, the little princess was none too engaging, she reflected, and her poor sacrificed child if not actually trapped....
The silken swish of a fan, breaking the silence, induced the Queen to look up.