THE HAMPDENS.
AN HISTORTETTE. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.
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CHAPTER VIII. A DAY AT COURT IN MERRY ENGLAND.
The next day was steeped in bliss to Henrietta, though, it had its agitations. Some hours of the morning were spent in strolling along the avenue and about the park with Lady Carlisle, and in sitting in the shade in the flower garden. That none of the gentlemen would be abroad, Henrietta knew: but she was surprised that Lady Carlisle was so entirely at liberty. It came out in the course of conversation, however, that this trip to Hampshire afforded a good opportunity for the Queen to hold her council also; and the Romish agents who had been collecting money in her name, through the priests’ influence with their flocks, were appointed to meet Her Majesty at Basing House, to report of their success in raising funds for paying the expenses of the recent march of troops against the Scotch, and for sustaining the war, if the stiffnecked Covenanters should try the patience of the King too far. There were two informal councils sitting all the morning in different apartments, and the Queen’s ladies were not wanted.
“Did you find it a very fearful thing to converse with the Queen?” Lady Carlisle asked, as she and Henrietta sat in the transparent shadow of a beech, hardly yet in full leaf. “Nobody is near. Tell me how you felt last night.”
“The presence of a sovereign is like no other presence,” Henrietta replied. “The awe is to me, and I suppose to others, a new feeling; but it is not a fear which renders one dumb and dazed.”
“I saw that it did not deprive you of your faculties; and that is probably the reason why Her Majesty was more pleased with you than I have often seen her with a young maiden so untrained in courtly ways. Did you not tremble lest she should judge you less favourably?”
“O no! I was in pain lest my thought of her should prove to have been too high and too endearing. This was my fear, because I have heard much evil of her which I have with-