Her eyes looked injected; her flabby face puckered at the temples like yellow milk skin. As I approached, she turned away in evident pain. Lady Hamilton was all effusive attentions at once. She waved me to stop, and supported her friend to the seat I had just occupied, commiserating, explaining, and fondling in one. “O, my darling queen! It is the neuralgia that worries my sweet like a dog. Lean on your Emma. Have you nothing, child--no salts, no drops?” I fetched a certain vinaigrette from my pocket, and bending before the royal knees, snapped the stopper once or twice under the royal nose. The effect was instantaneous. An expression of maudlin relief succeeded to the strain. She lay breathing peacefully, with a smile on her lips, until, after some minutes, she aroused herself with a sigh. “What was it, then? It is a Circe, with her witch’s face and her potions!” But this was to trespass on the other’s domain. “Give it to me, if you please,” said Mrs. Hart coldly. “Her Majesty would prefer to take it from my hand.” I returned it quietly to my pocket. “Nay, madam,” I said; “it is a remedy that must not be repeated.” She looked at me astounded; then broke into a forced laugh. “Hey-day! We are pretty absolute, are we not?” But the queen, grown suddenly very affable and communicative, put her aside with a hand which she laid upon my arm-- “We will not quarrel with our physician. She knows what she knows. Moreover, for all her long exile and the little errors which she has redeemed, she is of the great nation which we love. Is it not so, child? and hast thou heard what are the best and latest news? None other than that thy glorious captain, the supreme Nelson, has within the last few days annihilated the French fleet at Aboukir! Ah! that rose is from thy heart. It speaks the proud blood, the red rose of England, mantling above all foolish sophistries. Thou canst not but rejoice with us in the destruction of the enemies of thy race--of all the world!” And then she and the other began a little litany of excommunication:-- “Dogs and assassins!” “Despoilers of churches and women!” “Hordes of anti-Christ vomited from hell!” “Scum and rabble of an infamous democracy!” “Monsters of sacrilege!” “Cowards curst of God!” “Whom to slay is righteousness!” “To whom to give quarter is deadly sin!” “Subverters of all order and decency!” “The devil hang the lot!” said Lady Hamilton. The queen rose, quite refreshed and reinvigorated. Suddenly she was holding me with a piercing look. Craft and villainy peeped out of her little inflamed eyes. “I come to put a question to you, madam,” she said. “There is a lady of our retinue--the Signora de Fonseca Pimentel. Your correspondence contains no proof of her disloyalty to us?” “No, madam, or I should have informed M. de’ Medici,” I answered, in a faint terror; but rallied immediately. “I know only that she is in communication with the Signor Carafa since his escape.” “Ha!”