Her letter to Admiral Evertgen, which she had written with great pains in Dutch, had been returned as unintelligible, and now she must write again in English, which language the Admiral understood perfectly, it seemed. There was the question of the command of the Fleet on her mind; Russell and Monmouth had been met at Canterbury by the news of the disaster of Beachy Head, and now were back in London, hot against Torrington; Mary feared that the King would be vexed with her for having let them leave the council, yet she must again send some one to the Fleet, now without a commander. Her choice had fallen on Pembroke, who was an admiral, and Devonshire, whom she could trust, and thereupon Caermarthen had taken umbrage, and it had been a weary work of tact and sweetness to prove to him that he was indispensable in London and could not be spared—yet perhaps she had been wrong, and she should have let him go. All these lesser anxieties crowded on her weary soul, aching with the desire for news from the King, and, as she left her cabinet and came into her bedchamber, a profound melancholy overthrew her gallant spirit. Only two of her ladies were up—Madame de Marsac and Madame Nienhuys. Mary told them to go to bed, and cast herself into the window-seat and pulled the curtains apart from before the windows open on the warm soft night. "It is Your Majesty who should go to bed," said Madame Nienhuys firmly. Mary shook her head. "I cannot. I cannot sleep until I get a letter." "You neither sleep nor eat," protested the Dutch lady. "I am very well," smiled Mary sadly. "Go to bed, like a good creature——" "Indeed, Madam, I will not leave you in this state." "Have you been with me so long that you become disobedient? Very well, put out some of the candles—the light hurts my eyes." Basilea de Marsac rose softly and extinguished all the candles, save those on the mantelshelf. The large rich chamber was full of grateful shadow. Mary’s yellow gown gleamed secretively like gold through a veil. She took the diamonds from her neck and arms and gave them to Madame Nienhuys. She pulled off her rings slowly, and dropped them into her lap, looking the while out on to the July dark, that seemed to her to be painted with the menacing forces of war, flags, banners hanging bloody to their poles, the hot, smoking mouths of cannon, the glitter of armour through the dust—her husband’s army and her father’s struggling together to the death. She rose so suddenly that the rings fell and rolled all over the floor. "I think I will go to bed after all," she said faintly. They undressed her in silence and left her wide-eyed in the great crimson bed, canopied and plumed and enriched with the arms of England. When they had gone she lay for a while quite still. There was no moon, and she could not distinguish a single object in the room, and only uncertainly the dim spaces of the window.