Mary looked at her curiously, and a pause of silence fell, during which the triumphant progress of the storm seemed to gather and swell abroad like a trumpet blast without the dark window. Presently Mary said in a moved and barely audible voice— "Madam—about your son—have you ever thought that you would—forgive me—but he was nothing but pain to you——" She paused, and Lady Sunderland answered from a kind of self-absorption— "I did my best. It all seemeth so pointless now we are ruined—I thought of the name, but there is his brother—a cold, hard spirit who hath no kindness for me." Mary was looking at her intently. "That must be terrible," she said, breathing quick. "To have children who love one not—do you not think, perhaps, Madam, that it might be better—to—to have none?" Suddenly Lady Sunderland saw what she meant, divined the desperate appeal for comfort disguised in the halting sentence. "I do think so, truly, Madam," she answered instantly. "My children have, for all my care, been but discomfort to me." "But there was the time when they were little," said Mary, with a note in her voice that caused Lady Sunderland to turn away her face. "And you must have been glad of them—I—ah, I forgot what I was saying." She was young enough herself to be the Countess’s daughter, and that lady felt a great desire to take her in her arms and weep over her, but a certain reserve and majesty about Mary’s very simplicity prevented her from even discovering her sympathy. "It is very strange to me to think of my husband abroad in this great storm," said the Princess, looking up at the window. "I bless my God that I have the trust to believe that he is safe," she added quietly. "It was as if my heart was torn out when he left me, and since I have been in a kind of numbness." "It is hard on women that they must always sit at home," remarked the Countess; she thought of her own lord lurking in the back streets of Amsterdam; she would rather have been with him than playing her part at The Hague. The wind rose on a great shriek that seemed to rattle every board in the house. Mary winced back from the window, and her face was white even in the candle glow. "Let us go to prayers," she said faintly. CHAPTER XV THE SECOND SAILING The next day the Prince of Orange re-entered Helvoetsluys attended by four maimed ships, the rest having been utterly scattered and dispersed by the fearful storm; he then, though giddy and scarce able to stand through seasickness, proceeded, with a serene composure, to go from ship to ship animating his discomfited followers, and refused to be put on shore, lest it should be taken as a sign that he was discouraged in his enterprise and intended to postpone his sailing till the spring.