The colour receded from Mary’s face. She glanced in a half frightened way at her husband. "Oh," she murmured, "I wished to speak to you—but it can wait—for I suppose Admiral Herbert his business is ... important." There was a tenseness of containment among the three of them, as if they were all aware of great events and would not speak of them. "If the Princess is informed——" began Arthur Herbert. The Stadtholder interrupted. "The Princess knoweth everything, Mr. Herbert." Arthur Herbert betrayed the slightest surprise, covered instantly by a ready turn of speech. "Her Highness will understand, then, the importance of my business." He bowed again, very courteous, to Mary, who answered instantly— "I will not hinder you, Mr. Herbert, not for an instant." The Prince looked at her. "Send for me when I am free, Madame." With that they both saluted her, and turned into the room at the right of the vestibule. Mary stood motionless in the twilight, staring at the spot where the English messenger had stood, peered at the closed door that concealed him, then went softly and, it seemed, fearfully away. CHAPTER VI THE LETTERS OF MR. HERBERT When Admiral Herbert found himself closeted with William of Orange, he had some eagerness in observing that Prince whose name was so much in the mouths of men, and who had grown to be a kind of lodestar to Protestant England. The first thing that impressed a courtier of the Stewarts, used to a lavish and extravagant habit of living, was that there was no splendour in the plain dark room, the stern furnishing of which seemed almost parsimony in a royal Prince, nor any manner of display about the Stadtholder himself, who, with his own hands, shifted the candles in the brass sticks from the mantelshelf to the table, and set open the window on the summer woods. Arthur Herbert looked keenly at him; he had dropped his hat and mantle on to a chair, and his person was fully revealed in the steady red candle glow. He was at this time in his thirty-seventh year, at the height of his reputation: the most respected statesman, one of the most feared generals and powerful rulers in Europe, the head of the nation which was supreme in trade and maritime dominion, the foremost champion of the reformed religion, first Prince of the blood in England, the close ally and councillor of the Empire, of Spain, the Northern States, Germany, and, as it was whispered, of the Pope, the leader of the English opposition, and husband to the heiress of that country, the rallying point for the discontents and indignations of all those whom the King of France had injured or the King of England put out of humour.