It was the very question asked by Hester Bridgeman, whom she found packing her clothes in her room.

“Take care that this is sent after me,” she said, “when a messenger I shall send calls for it.”

“What, you have your dismissal?”

“No, I should no more get it than you have done.  They cannot afford to let any one go, you see, or they will have to dress up the chambermaids to stand behind the Queen’s chair.  I have settled it with my cousin, Harry Bridgeman, I shall mix with the throng that come to ask for news, and be off with him before the crowd breaks in, as they will some of these days, for the guards are but half-hearted.  My Portia, why did not you take a good offer, and go with the Princess?”

“I thought it would be base.”

“And much you gained by it!  You are only suspected and accused.”

“I can’t be a rat leaving a sinking ship.”

“That is courteous, but I forgive it, Portia, as I know you will repent of your folly.  But you never did know which side to look for the butter.”

Perhaps seeing how ugly desertion and defection looked in others made constancy easier to Anne, much as she longed for the Close at Winchester, and she even thought with a hope of the Golden Lamb, Gracechurch, as an immediate haven sure to give her a welcome.

Her occupation of reading to the Queen was ended by the King’s return, so physically exhausted by violent nose-bleeding, so despondent at the universal desertion, and so broken-hearted at his daughter’s defection, that his wife was absorbed in attending upon him.

Anne began to watch for an opportunity to demand a dismissal, which she thought would exempt her from all blame, but she was surprised and a little dismayed by being summoned to the King in the Queen’s chamber.  He was lying on a couch clad in a loose dressing-gown instead of his laced coat, and a red night-cap replacing his heavy peruke, and his face was as white and sallow as if he were recovering from a long illness.

“Little godchild,” he said, holding out his hand as Anne made her obeisance, “the Queen tells me you can read well.  I have a fancy to hear.”

Immensely relieved at the kindness of his tone, Anne courtesied, and murmured out her willingness.

“Read this,” he said; “I would fain hear this; my father loved it.  Here.”

Anne felt her task a hard one when the King pointed to the third Act of Shakespeare’s Richard II.  She steeled herself and strengthened her voice as best she could, and struggled on till she came to—­

“I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My sceptre for a palmer’s walking-staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints,
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little, little grave.”

There she fairly broke down, and sobbed.