"I would I could do it," said Patience; "but I am not mistress."
"Shall you go back to France with the queen?" asked Ann.
"No, I will not do that," said Patience; "I would rather carry her away and hide her. King Charles's court is bad enough; what the Duke of Orleans will be I dare not even think. No, I will keep my sweet lamb unspotted if I can. She knows no evil, therefore she sees none, though she be hedged in with wrong-doers. But that will not always be. I promised her dear mother I would protect her, and so, help me God, I will."
"You will do well," said Ann. "She is a sweet flower, and worthy of all care; I would she were my sister."
"I pray I may live to see her an honest man's wife," said Patience.
Such conversations as these were frequent between the two, Patience not having the remotest idea that it was the Newbolts who possessed the lands which should have been Agnes's heritage.
The Newbolts were equally ignorant that Agnes was a De Lisle. To them she was, and had ever been, plain "Agnes Beaumont", the queen's favourite and the Princess Henrietta's devoted companion.
But enlightenment was soon to come to Patience. The winter passed, and the spring began to show itself. The trees in the park were budding green; April showers succeeded March winds, and there was much gaiety in London. Gilded coaches went and came in the streets, barges floated up the Thames, and no one troubled, though many knew, that the royal exchequer was well-nigh empty. The people adored their king as they had never adored his saintly father. Wherever he passed there were shouts of, "Long live the king!" and his smiles and bows were received with enthusiasm.
Never had a king been so popular. There was laughter and merriment everywhere, dancing and songs even in the streets. The only place where any decorum was observed was at Somerset House. There the queen-dowager dwelt, and the people did not love her. She never had been a favourite. Many people were ready to lay the blame of her dead husband's errors upon her shoulders, so they frowned upon the queen-dowager and her sombre court, while they laughed at the merry court at Whitehall, and would not listen to the evil reports of the goings-on within its precincts.
The pendulum had swung back; the order of the day had changed; they treated Charles, his follies, his sins, as they might have treated the peccadilloes of a spoilt child. When he rode forth in his gilded coach or went on horseback through the city with his favourites and his brother, the Duke of York, in his rich attire of gold and satin, his long, curled wig, great hat with plumes which swept almost on to his shoulders, the people were wild with delight, and would press round him in their eagerness; and he would speak to them, calling them his good people, bidding them make way for him, with that wonderful charm of manner, that smile, which was the inherent gift of the Stuart race, and won every heart. They cared not what he did nor what he said; he was their king, their chosen one, their beloved. If he squandered money they laughed, and hardly grumbled at supplying his extravagances. Had he not suffered dire poverty in those evil days when Cromwell sat in his seat and the Puritan preachers thundered their maledictions against him from St. Paul's Cross? Every old English custom which could be raked up was brought to the fore, to the extreme delight of all men. He touched for the king's evil, and the sick believed they were cured. In the people's imaginings he could not do wrong, though wrong stared them in the face.