Page:The Queens of England.djvu/526

 476 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. enough pleased with her. Catherine's troubles were, however, not far distant. It must have been a great grief to her affec- tionate heart to part with the attendants selected to accompany her to England and who were speedily dismissed by Charles, with the exception of the Countess of Penalwa, who perceived the confusion their presence created, and a list of new ones was submitted to the queen for her approval. How deeply her heart, which had early been given to Charles, must have been pained to behold on that list the name of Lady Castle- maine, her husband's acknowledged mistress. It appears that Catherine had been informed of the king's infatuated attach- ment to this woman before she quitted Lisbon, and had been charged by her mother never to permit her name to be men- tioned in her hearing, so that Catherine never having made the slightest allusion to the subject Charles imagined her wholly ignorant of it, up to the time when she perceived the name of Lady Castlemaine at the head of the list. The queen instantly drew her pen across it, and when Charles presumed to insist on her being nominated to the office, she replied haughtily she would return to her own country sooner than submit to such an indignity, nor could Charles pacify her till he had promised to have nothing more to do with Lady Castle- maine — a vain concession, and a pledge too speedily broken ! At a drawing-room held at Hampton Court within two months after her marriage, Charles insulted Catherine so far as to introduce Lady Castlemaine to her. The queen not hear- ing the name distinctly, received her with her usually graceful and benign manner, but a whisper from behind advertising her of the disgraceful fact, she started from her seat, changed color, from red to pale alternately ; blood rushed from her nostrils, and she sunk in the arms of her attendants, by whom she was carried senseless from the apartment. Thus the as- 'sembly was suddenly broken up by a most unprovoked insult towards the queen, from her royal consort. Charles had, in- deed, taken up an opinion that the queen wanted to govern, by her refusal to admit Lady Castlemaine as her lady of the bed- chamber, and was resolved to carry his point. The lord chan- cellor, though so much disgusted by Charles' conduct that he had quitted the court, suffered himself to be employed as a sort of mediator, to persuade the queen into acquiescence. He had an interview with her, but on his attempting to introduce the subject, her tears and indignation prevented him from pro-