A tremendous uproar was raised when Anne's women-in-waiting entered her room the morning after her flight and found her bed undisturbed and the princess herself missing. Before many minutes the whole court was aroused with the lamentations of the people, who declared that the princess had been murdered by the queen's priests. The storm rose to such a height that a mob collected in the street and swore that the palace should be pulled down, and Mary Beatrice pulled to pieces if Anne were not forthcoming. No doubt the threat would have been put into execution had it not been for the discovery of a letter which the missing princess had left lying on her toilet-table, stating that she had gone off to avoid the king's displeasure on account of her husband's desertion; and that she should remain away until a reconciliation had been effected. "Never was any one," she wrote, "in such an unhappy condition, so divided between duty to a father and a husband; and therefore I know not what I must do but to follow one to preserve the other." This would be all very well if she had been dutiful to her father; but as she had only one week before informed Orange by letter that her husband would soon be with him, ready to serve his cause to the utmost, we can only feel intense disgust at such deception {367} CHAPTER XI. |James II. arrived in London just after the excitement caused by Anne's escape had subsided. He had been obliged to leave his army on account of illness, and when he heard of his daughter's conduct, he struck his breast and exclaimed: "God help me! my own children have forsaken me in my distress." From that moment he lost heart and ceased to struggle to retain his crown; but he never censured Anne as he might have done, nor was he aware of the extent of her treachery. Meanwhile, the Prince of Orange induced many of the most loyal subjects of the crown to join him by circulating the report that he had come to England for the sole purpose of establishing peace between James II. and his people. So he advanced as far as Henley, and while resting there heard, to his unspeakable joy, that the king had disbanded his army, and followed his wife, who, with the Prince of Wales, had escaped to France. They could not more completely have played into his hand.