Most alarming of all was the news that the Queen-mother had fled with
all her people, and most of her treasures, from her palace at Somerset
House--for Henrietta Maria was not a woman to fly before a phantom fear.
She had seen too much of the stern realities of life to be scared by
shadows; and she had neither establishment nor power in France equal to
those she left in England. In Paris the daughter of the great Henry was a
dependent. In London she was second only to the King; and her Court was
more esteemed than Whitehall.
"If she has fled, there must be reason for it," said the newly elected
Superior, who boasted of correspondents at Paris, notably a cousin in that
famous convent, the Visitandines de Chaillot, founded by Queen Henrietta,
and which had ever been a centre of political and religious intrigue, the
most fashionable, patrician, exalted, and altogether worldly establishment.
Alarmed at this dismal news, Angela wrote urgently to her sister, but with
no effect; and the passage of every day, with occasional rumours of an
increasing death-rate in London, strengthened her fears, until terror
nerved her to a desperate resolve. She would go to London to see her
sister; to nurse her if she were sick; to mourn for her if she were dead.
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