"This is my Lady Marlborough her doing; she put this into your head, Anne, and it is too much." "Yes, it is too much," answered Anne, "that Your Majesty should have such a dislike to my friend." "Her insolence," exclaimed Mary, "is beyond all bearing. I have it on good report that she hath spoken of the King with great disrespect." "She ain’t the only one if she hath," retorted Anne. "His Majesty ain’t so popular——" "I command you stop," said Mary, in a cold tone of deep anger. Anne submitted sulkily. "La, I meant no harm." "You go too far," answered Mary in a low controlled tone. "His Majesty thinketh it ungenerous to quarrel with a woman, or your behaviour would have been put a stop to before. I, perhaps, shall not be so long enduring. I cannot and will not take the defiance of my Lady Marlborough—no, nor your incivility either, Anne." "I don’t suppose Your Majesty would hesitate to clap me up if you dared," said Anne, lashed by the attack on her favourite. "There is one of your relations in the Tower, and where the uncle is the sister may follow; but I warn Your Majesty that I have the Parliament behind me——" Again Mary interrupted. "Leave me until you can command yourself." Anne hesitated, but the music that had screened their talk had ceased, and beyond a point Mary always quelled her. She rose, courtsied haughtily, and withdrew to the other end of the gallery, where Lady Marlborough—a gorgeous blonde shrew with a vulgar voice—was playing comet with Prince George for partner. Mary closed her eyes for a second. This sordid quarrel with her sister, mainly based on demands for money, was the last bitterness of her position; she had tried every means of conciliation in vain. Lady Marlborough’s hold on her puppet was too firm, and Anne but took advantage of any kindness from the Queen to press for an addition to her already huge allowance. The violins played a gavotte. Mary sat motionless, listening to the subdued volume of talk by which she was surrounded, and thinking of that far-distant day when she had danced with her husband in this very room—a week or so before her marriage. She recalled how she had enjoyed dancing, and wondered to think how dead that passion was. "I used to think," she thought, "that a dance measure would lure me from my grave, and now the gayest melody written will not move me." She gazed over her shoulder at her reflection in the tall mirror against the wall to the left; she beheld a fair image, in yellow silk and diamonds, with a very proud carriage. A Queen, young and beautiful—the description sounded like a favoured creature from one of those fairy tales she used to read; she knew the reality—a tired woman, unutterably lonely, estranged from all her family, childless, and forlorn. Queen Catherine came to take her leave. "No news yet from Ireland?" she asked, in her awkward English. Mary courteously rose before the woman who had been Queen in Whitehall when she was a child.