The exiles, French and English, gazed with more sullen feelings; but while no national pride was thrilled in their bosoms, the thought of their former wrongs and suffering and the anticipation of their speedy avenging made them no less fiercely wish success to those spreading sails wooing the wind for England. And there was one foreigner, who loved Holland as her own country, and whose heart beat with a pride and a terror as intense as that which inspired any of the Dutch. This was the wife of the Stadtholder, who had yesterday returned from Helvoetsluys. She had been above two hours riding up and down the sands watching the slow passing of the fleet; in her company were the English ladies, the Countesses of Sunderland and Argyll and some of her own attendants; she had been very silent, and, now, as the afternoon was fading, she touched up her beast and galloped away from all of them along the dunes. She reined her black horse at a higher point where some sparse poplar trees, stunted, leafless, and tufts of crackling grass grew out of the dry white sand, and looked round at the great sweep of sea covered with ships and the great curve of shore covered with people. Then her glance returned to the object where it had rested since she first rode down to Scheveningen, the blue flag hanging heavily above the "Brill," the ship in which the Prince sailed. Amid all the crossed lines of mighty masts, intricate cordage, and strained sails she had never failed to distinguish, now in sun, now in shade, sometimes lifted by the breeze, sometimes slack, this standard, though she was very shortsighted, and much clear to the other spectators was a blur to her. When she used her perspective glass she could sometimes read the legend on this flag, which was the motto of the House of Orange with the ellipsis filled in—"I will maintain the liberties of England and the Protestant Religion." Mary rode out farther along the dunes, the crisp sand flying from her horse’s feet. She was a fine horsewoman, and had dropped the reins on her saddle to hold her glass. The wind was keen on her face and swept back the long curls from her ears and fluttered the white plume in her beaver. Though she was near so vast a multitude no human sound disturbed the clear stillness; there was only the long beat of the surf on the smooth wet sand and an occasional cry of some pearl-coloured sea-bird as he flashed across the golden grey. In Mary’s heart all terror, remorse, sadness had been absorbed by strong pride; the doubts, shames, fears that had tortured her were gone; she did not think of her father, of her danger, of her loneliness, only that she, of all the women there, was the beloved wife of the man who led this—a nation’s strength—into war for that cause which to her was the holiest of all causes, the new liberty against the ancient tyranny, tolerance against oppression—all that she symbolized by the word Protestantism.