reverie which she was pursuing with her eyes on the dancing flame of a small wood fire.
“I must attend Her Majesty,” she said. “I must be gone. Amuse yourself here,” and she threw towards Henrietta some books, and two or three of the diurnal sheets which were becoming common. “Amuse yourself here, if you like to wait my return. But I may be detained an hour; and you can go to rest when you will. This little bell will bring the woman who is to attend upon you.” And the Lady of the Bedchamber was gone.
She soon reappeared,—all smiles. Her Majesty desired to make Henrietta’s acquaintance, and would receive her now, if she was not too much fatigued, and if she would disregard Her Majesty’s undress.
Nothing could be easier as a first passage of intercourse with Royalty. Henrietta’s dread had been that she should faint when the moment came for seeing the faces, and hearing the voices, which she had dreamed of, sleeping and waking, for as many years as she could remember. The apprehension crossed her mind now; but it was gone in a moment. It was no depression, but exaltation that the summons created. She cast a glance into the mirror, and then at Lady Carlisle, who replied to what was in her mind.
“No matter! For once dress is not important. Her Majesty knows that you have travelled all day: and Her Majesty is expecting us.”
The Queen was reading one of the newsletters of the day while an attendant combed out her long hair. As she shook back the curls on Lady Carlisle’s approach, her black eyes shone in the candle-light, so as to satisfy Henrietta so far in regard to her beauty.
The Queen held out her hand to be kissed, and then, instead of withdrawing it, took Henrietta’s hand in hers, and made her change her kneeling for a sitting posture on her footstool.
“There! sit there!” she said. “And tell me,—is it true that you are my namesake?”
“I have the honour to bear the same name with your Majesty.”
“But you are not named after me? No, you are not quite so young. But we are both Henrietta. And your other name?” she said, smiling down upon Henrietta; “are you of that in like manner proud?”
“My other name is Hampden,” said Henrietta quietly: “a name of which all who bear it are apt to be proud.”
“And with good right,” said the Queen. “Is not the family a very old one?” she asked of Lady Carlisle.
“A Baldwin de Hampden is in Domesday Boke, Madam, as the owner of the very estate in Buckinghamshire which Mr. John Hampden inhabits at this day. Is it not so, my dear?”
“And,” the Queen interposed, “for which he refuses to pay the charges due to the King.” She smiled as Henrietta hung her head, and continued:
“This is no dishonour to the old name, though it may be the mistake of one bearer of that name. I can assure you that the King believes he has no more honourable subject than Mr. Hampden; and I have heard him say that he would rather have so honest a gentleman in his government than enlisting less worthy persons against it.”
Henrietta said what she felt; that she could imagine no event so happy as that her father should be in the King’s political service;—in such office as should imply their so far thinking alike as that they could act to a common end.
The bells of the French clock in the corner of the apartment here rang out their midnight chime; and Henrietta was dismissed to her rest, with an injunction to take her fill of sleep. The ladies would spend the next morning in retirement, as there would be an assemblage of gentlemen who must not be disturbed. Henrietta might sleep till noon if she pleased.
“She speaks like a king’s daughter,” the Queen observed, half laughingly, to Lady Carlisle, after the door closed behind Henrietta. “I suppose the children of these portentous malcontents always believe their fathers created to tread upon true kings.”
Lady Carlisle said, apologetically, that Mr. Hampden’s influence in the country, since the trial, had really been enough to turn his children’s heads. They would learn, sooner or later, what such popularity was worth in comparison with genuine and hereditary loyalty. This child hardly needed such instruction, she believed; for she had a heart and mind as true and devoted as if she had been born and bred in a Court.
“Indeed!” the Queen exclaimed. “Who would have thought it! We must encourage the damsel, and see—”
Here the Queen fell into musing. After the hair was done, and the attendant dismissed, Lady Carlisle remained for ten minutes leaning on the back of the Queen’s chair, and conversing in low tones. She had been disappointed in her notion of marrying a Hampden to some loyal young gentleman connected with the Court. The child’s affections were not free. The months that had passed had not cured the attachment to her Roundhead lover.
“Perhaps it may be better so,” the Queen quietly remarked. “My Lady Carlisle, you are half asleep. Is it not true that a person who stands between two parties—You clasp your hands. You comprehend? Inquire for me, then, of your own rare judgment, whether it may not be an easier thing to induce a young maiden of enthusiasm to wed the man she loves, than to extinguish her love, in order to marry some gentleman unknown. If she may be equally a mediator in either case, which plan is likely to be the easiest of accomplishment?”
Lady Carlisle was in raptures at the condescension of Her Majesty’s genius, which did not disdain the interests of a young daughter of a country gentleman: but the Queen’s air of condescension vanished as she coldly declared that the King’s interests equalised all classes and all qualifications in her eyes.
This was, Lady Carlisle said, precisely what she meant to express: but when she felt strongly she was apt to offend where she most desired to commend her duty.
