Everybody at court knew that the king and queen had quarrelled, for they scarcely looked at each other. If Catharine had known how to manage her husband she might have won him; but she was too honest to flatter him more than he deserved, and loved him too well to let him suppose she could justify his conduct when she knew how much he had been to blame. She spent hours at a time in her room weeping, while he amused himself with his friends and treated his wife with indifference. He was more deeply offended at her wishing to leave him than at any of her angry reproaches, and sent Lord Clarendon to talk to her in his behalf. She was very penitent, but insisted that she ought to have the privilege of selecting her own servants, and would on no account consent to the presence of an objectionable person. After that King Charles brutally upbraided her with the non-performance of the marriage treaty with regard to her dowry,--though she was not to blame for it,--and insulted the Portuguese ambassador on her account. Diego Silvas was thrown into prison because he was unable to complete arrangements for paying the sum of money which was, in reality, not yet due. Catharine knew that these indignities {203}were aimed at herself, and felt very unhappy that others should be made to suffer on her account. A temporary reconciliation was effected between the royal couple by the visit of Queen Henrietta, who declared that she had come to England with the express intention of offering her congratulations on their marriage. She set up her court at Greenwich Palace, and on the day after her arrival the young couple paid their first state visit together. Queen Henrietta awaited them at the first door of the palace after they ascended the stairs; and when she took the poor, neglected, almost heart-broken Catharine in her arms, and folded her in a motherly embrace, the young woman must have felt that she had found a friend at last. The queen-mother could speak no Spanish, and Catharine little English, but the king and the Duke of York acted as interpreters. It is probable that Queen Henrietta meant to intimate to her son, and to all the courtiers present, the respect due the young queen when she said: "That she should never have come to England again, except for the pleasure of seeing her, to love her as a daughter, and serve her as a queen." Catharine replied with gratified pleasure, "That in love and obedience, neither the king nor any of her children should exceed her." This visit lasted four hours, and seems to have had a good effect, for on their return to Hampton Court the king and queen supped in public, much to the delight of their court; and the next evening, when the king returned from a trip to London, her majesty went some distance on the road with her household to meet him.