“I have seen little of you this last month,” said Mary, taking my arm and walking with me away from De Grammont’s group.  She might have remarked with equal emotion that Cromwell was dead or the weather fine.  She did not wait for an explanation of my absence, but continued with a touch of eager hesitancy and a fluttering show of anxiety, “Have you had news recently of my brother George?”

Of course I could not tell her the truth, so I answered evasively:  “I suppose you have heard the news spread throughout the court that he has gone to Canada?  Doubtless you can tell me more than I know.”

“That is all I know,” she answered.  “When he went, or where, I have been unable to learn, for George is a forbidden topic in our household and seems to be the same at court.  What has he done, baron?  I have heard it hinted that he threatened to take the king’s life.  Surely he did nothing of the sort.”

“If he did, it was in a delirium of fever,” I answered, hoping that she would cease speaking of George and would ask a question or two concerning myself.

But no.  She turned again to me, asking, “Did you hear him?”

“I have been told that the accusation comes from his physician, and perhaps from one who was listening at his door,” I answered, avoiding a direct reply.

“I suspect the informant is a wretched little hussy of whom I have heard—­the daughter of the innkeeper,” remarked Mary, looking up to me for confirmation.

“Suspect no longer,” I answered, with sharper emphasis than I should have used.

“Do you know her?” she asked.

“I do not know a ‘wretched hussy’ who is the daughter of the innkeeper,” I answered sullenly.  “I know a beautiful girl who watched devotedly at your brother’s bedside, day and night, and probably saved his life at a time when he was deserted by his sisters and his mother.”

“We often find that sort of kindness in those low creatures,” she answered, unaware of the tender spot she was touching, and ignoring my reference to George’s sisters and his mother.

Naturally Mary was kind of heart, but her mother was a hard, painted old Jezebel, whose teachings would have led her daughter away from every gentle truth and up to all that was hard, cruel, and selfish in life.  A woman in the higher walks of life is liable to become enamelled before her twentieth year.

While I did not blame Mary for what she had said relating to Bettina, still I was angry and longed to do battle with any one who could fight.

After we had been together perhaps ten minutes, some one claimed her for a dance, and she left me, saying hurriedly in my ear:—­

“I’ll see you soon again.  I want to ask you further about George.”  She had not a question to ask about me.

She was not to see me again, for I asked permission of the queen to withdraw, and immediately left the ball.

While I was crossing the park on my way back to Whitehall, the wind moaned and groaned—­it did not breathe.  The stars did not twinkle—­they glared.  The nightingales did not sing—­they screamed.  And the roses were odorless.  Perhaps all this change to gloom was within me rather than without, but it existed just the same, and I went home and to bed, hating all the world save Bettina, whom I vowed for the hundredth time never to see again.