people were putting about stories to prevent a good understanding between his master and the Queen.' So angry was he, and such a coil did he raise, that Elizabeth, after due reflection, made up her mind to lend herself to a farce—for a farce it certainly was—well calculated, indeed, to deceive the envoy and keep Ivan's illusions alive. On May 17, Pissemski was invited to proceed, with no attendant save Roberts, to a country house belonging to the Chancellor, Lord Bromley. The Chancellor, having ceremoniously received him at the entrance of his dwelling, conducted him to the garden, where refreshments were prepared. Very soon a party of ladies appeared in one of the garden alleys. At the head of the group, between Lady Bromley and Lady Huntingdon, walked the person the envoy already delighted to call 'the Tsar's betrothed.' The gentlemen saluted from a distance, and the Chancellor told Pissemski the Queen had given orders that he was to be shown her niece—'not in a chamber, but in broad daylight, so that he might see her better.' The Russian stared with all his might. A turn in the park was suggested, and arranged so that he might meet the object of his curiosity several times over. After this, Bromley said to him, 'Have you looked at her well?' 'I have obeyed my instructions,' was the reply; and in his report Pissemski wrote: 'The Princess of Hountinsk, Mary Hantis (sic), is tall, slight, and white-skinned; she has blue eyes, fair hair, a straight nose, and her fingers are long and taper.'
Horsey has left us his own account of this scene, which may very well have been touched up a little in Pissemski's narrative, the essential features of which I have just reproduced. The English chronicler declares that when he saw the 'betrothed' the envoy was so overcome with emotion that he retired backwards, saying he must be content with a single glance at the angel he believed destined to become his Sovereign's wife. But Horsey was not present, and the angel had very nearly reached her thirtieth year!
Elizabeth was determined to give herself the amusement of carrying on the farce to the very end. Once more she sent for Pissemski, told him how much she regretted her niece was not sufficiently beautiful to please the Tsar's taste, and said, 'I think you did not think her very fair yourself!' But the Russian held his ground.
'I think her fair: the rest is in God's hands.' And he pressed the Queen to make her intentions on the subject clear. But Elizabeth had already invented a new means of delay. She would send a confidential man of her own to Russia with Pissemski, and this Ambassador should receive all her instructions and be invested with all the necessary powers.
