"I have really hardly had time to say my prayers, and was feign to run away to Kensington, where I had three hours of quiet, which was more than I had had together since I saw you. "That place made me think how happy I was there when I had your dear company; but now—I will say no more, for I shall hurt my own eyes, which I now want more than ever. "Adieu! Think of me and love me as much as I shall you, who I love more than my life."—QUEEN MARY TO KING WILLIAM, 15*th July* 1690. "Every hour maketh me more impatient to hear from you, and everything I hear stir I think bringeth me a letter.... I have stayed till I am almost asleep in hopes; but they are vaine, and I must once more go to bed and wished to be waked with a letter, which I shall at last get, I hope ... adieu! Do but love me and I can bear anything."—QUEEN MARY TO KING WILLIAM, _July_ 1690. —"My poor heart is ready to break every time I think in what perpetual danger you are; I am in greater fears than can be imagined by any who loves less than myself. "I count the hours and the moments, and have only reason left to think—as long as I have no letters all is well.... I never do anything without thinking—now, it may be, you are in the greatest dangers, and yet I must see company on my set days; I must play twice a week; nay, I must laugh and talk, tho’ never so much against my will. I believe that I dissemble very ill to those who know me; at least it is a great constraint to myself, yet I must endure it. All my movements are so watched, and all I do so observed, that if I eat less, speak less, or look more grave, all is lost in the opinion of the world; so that I have this misery added to that of your absence and my fears for your dear person, that I must grin when my heart is ready to break, and talk when my heart is so oppressed I can scarce breathe.... Besides, I must hear of business, which, being a thing I am so new in and so unfit for, doth but break my brains the more and not ease my heart.... "Farewell! Do but continue to love me and forgive the taking up so much of your time to your poor wife, who deserves more pity than ever any creature did, and who loves you a great deal too much for her own ease, tho’ it can’t be more than you deserve."—QUEEN MARY TO KING WILLIAM, 5*th September* 1690. CHAPTER I A DARK DAWNING In the King’s antechamber at Kensington House my Lord Dorset and one of his pensioners (of which he had a many) awaited an audience of His Majesty. It was a year since the Revolution, a cold-wet autumn, and Kensington House, recently bought from my Lord Nottingham, stood blank and sad among dripping wet trees.