This gaiety was in Princess Henrietta's blood. Was she not a granddaughter of Henry IV, that great lover of pleasure?
So these two children ignored the death-traps which lay under their feet, those oubliettes which had swallowed up so many men and women. They did not see the ghosts that others saw gliding along the passages, which led to mysterious chambers, down narrow staircases, ending they knew not where. They did not care. They would escape from Patience and play their games of hide-and-seek and touch-wood, their cries of childish joy ringing through the corridors and starting the echoes. Men would smile at them, and women shake their heads, but no one bade them be silent. Sometimes even the king in the distance heard them and would smile. "That is the wild Henrietta and her companion," he would say.
"Shall they be silenced, sire?" asked a courtier once.
"Nay, nay; it is good for them to laugh," he answered. "Their weeping days will come. It were a sin to silence them."
On this day, when the princess and Agnes were sent forth from the king's presence, they took refuge with Patience, and, curling themselves up on the window-sill, began to talk.
"I wonder if we shall have as good a time in England as we have had here!" said Agnes. "I feel as if I were going to lose you, Princess. You will be a great lady at court, and I am only a child and nobody. I wonder what this England is like! I have heard that the sun shines but little there. I do not feel much love for it or for the people. I never can forget that they killed their king, your father."
"If I cannot forget, I shall have to make believe I can," said Henrietta; "but as to what England is like, I know no more than you do," she added. "I was brought over from England just as you were, an infant in swaddling clothes, by my dear Lady Dalkeith, so we are equal there."
"Except that you know who you are, but I am only Agnes Beaumont, with neither father nor mother, nor kith nor kin, no one save Patience to care for me."
"We care for you, my mother and I," said the princess, drawing the child closer to her. "What more do you want?"
"Never to leave you," said the child passionately. "I would be your handmaid, your servant." And, as if a sudden fear had taken hold on her, she clung to the princess.