"Until he is avenged," she would say; "until his murderers have suffered what he suffered, if that be possible!"
Behind her, leaning on the back of her chair, was her young daughter, a girl of sixteen--that child who had never seen her father's face, who had been brought over to France by stealth in swaddling clothes, who had suffered all the miseries of exile, and shared all the poverty which her mother's position had forced upon them.
Everybody knows the story of how the queen kept this child in bed in winter, because they could afford no fire in their room. Possibly she did this to shame the king, Louis XIV, who denied the necessaries of existence to the daughter of Henry IV.
The princess was at the present time just passing from girlhood into womanhood. She gave promise of great beauty, which was to be fully realized. There was a triumphant look on her face; indeed, on the faces of all those present, for kneeling at the queen's feet was a messenger who had just arrived from Holland bearing the news that a deputation from England had waited on her son, Charles II, and had invited him back to England, entreating him to suffer himself to be placed upon that throne which had cost his father his life.
After the envoy had delivered his message, a great silence fell upon all present. The queen, for a few seconds, seemed incapable of realizing the truth. It is at this moment we introduce our readers to her court.
Suddenly a little voice broke the silence, and a childish figure, a girl of ten or eleven years old, sprang forward, and holding out with both her little hands a somewhat shabby white satin gown, she pirouetted into the centre of the room, and, dancing on the tips of her toes, sang gaily: "The king has come in to his own again; the king has come in to his own!"
The ice was broken: a general movement took place. A young woman in a tight-fitting black gown and a white cap sprang after the child and passionately shook her.
"How dare you; how dare you!" she exclaimed; but the child twisted herself free of her, and ran lightly to the Princess Henrietta, hiding herself in the folds of her gown.
"Let her alone," said the queen, "she has spoken for us all." And a smile such as had not been seen on that royal face for many a day crept over the widowed queen's countenance. Regaining her self-command, she said to the messenger still kneeling before her:
"I thank you for the haste you have made in coming to us, and I bid you return with equal haste to my dear son, and tell his majesty that all loyal hearts rejoice with him, and that we await but his command to join him in England. Until then we will abide here as patient and loyal subjects."