"Do you think that anything to me compared to the regard of the Prince?" asked Mary passionately. "I thought that you would understand. Can you picture him as my pensioner—him! It is laughable, when my whole life hath been one submission to his will. Oh, you must see that he is everything in the world to me ... I have no one else——" She continued speaking rapidly, almost incoherently, as was her fashion when greatly moved. "At first I thought he would never care, but now he doth; but he is not meek, and I might lose it all—all this happiness that hath been so long a-coming. Oh, I will write such a letter to my lord!" "You sacrifice a good deal for the Prince," said the Countess half sadly. "Why," answered Mary, "this is easier than going against my father, and giving the world cause to scorn me as an unnatural daughter——" Her lips quivered, but she set them proudly. "I have talked enough on this matter, God forgive me, but I was angered by this lord’s impertinence." The Countess made some movement to speak, but Mary checked her. "No more of this, my Lady Sunderland," she said firmly. She took a sheet of paper from the bureau and began to write. Lady Sunderland moved to the stove and watched her intently and with some curiosity. The wife of my late Lord President was tolerably well informed in English politics, and knew that the Tories would rather have the daughter than the nephew of the Stewarts on the throne, and that the great bulk of the general nobility would rather have a woman like the Princess than a man like the Prince to rule them. She did not doubt that Mary, with her nearer claim, her English name and blood, would readily be accepted by the English as Queen, and that the nation would be glad to retain the services of her husband at the price of some title, such as Duke of Gloucester—which had been proposed for him before—and whatever dignity Mary chose to confer on him. She certainly thought that this scheme, pleasing as it might be to Whig and Tory, showed a lack of observation of character on the part of the originator, my Lord Danby; Lord Sunderland had always declared that it was the Prince they needed, not his wife, and that they would never obtain him save for the highest price—the crown. Yet the Countess, standing in this little room, watching Mary writing with the candlelight over her bright hair and white garments, seeing her calmly enclose to the Prince Lord Danby’s letter and a copy of her answer, could not help some wonder that this young woman—a Stewart, and born to power and gaiety—should so lightly and scornfully put aside a crown—the crown of England. When Mary had finished her letters and sealed them, she rose and came also to the stove. She looked very grave. "The Prince saith not one word of our losses," she remarked—"Madame Bentinck, I mean, and M. Fagel, yet both must have touched him nearly. I am sorry for M. Bentinck, who hath had no time to grieve."