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The Nest of the Sparrowhawk: A Romance of the XVIIth Century

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy · English · Gutenberg #12175 · 549,548 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Nest of the Sparrowhawk: A Romance of the XVIIth Century

Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy


        
Release date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #12175]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEST OF THE SPARROWHAWK: A ROMANCE OF THE XVIITH CENTURY ***

THE NEST OF THE SPARROWHAWK

_A ROMANCE OF THE XVIIth CENTURY_

BY THE BARONESS ORCZY

_November, 1909_




CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER
      I. THE HOUSE OF A KENTISH SQUIRE
     II. ON A JULY AFTERNOON
    III. THE EXILE
     IV. GRINDING POVERTY
      V. THE LEGAL ASPECT
     VI. UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE ELMS
    VII. THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES
   VIII. PRINCE AMÉDÉ D'ORLÉANS
     IX. SECRET SERVICE
      X. AVOWED ENMITY
     XI. SURRENDER
    XII. A WOMAN'S HEART
   XIII. AN IDEA

PART II
    XIV. THE HOUSE IN LONDON
     XV. A GAME OF PRIMERO
    XVI. A CONFLICT
   XVII. RUS IN URBE
  XVIII. THE TRAP
    XIX. DISGRACE
     XX. MY LORD PROTECTOR'S PATROL

PART III
    XXI. IN THE MEANWHILE
   XXII. BREAKING THE NEWS
  XXIII. THE ABSENT FRIEND
   XXIV. NOVEMBER THE 2D
    XXV. AN INTERLUDE
   XXVI. THE OUTCAST
  XXVII. LADY SUE'S FORTUNE
 XXVIII. HUSBAND AND WIFE
   XXIX. GOOD-BYE
    XXX. ALL BECAUSE OF THE TINDER-BOX
   XXXI. THE ASSIGNATION
  XXXII. THE PATH NEAR THE CLIFFS

PART IV
 XXXIII. THE DAY AFTER
  XXXIV. AFTERWARDS
   XXXV. THE SMITH'S FORGE
  XXXVI. THE GIRL-WIFE
 XXXVII. THE OLD WOMAN
XXXVIII. THE VOICE OF THE DEAD
  XXXIX. THE HOME-COMING OF ADAM LAMBERT
     XL. EDITHA'S RETURN
    XLI. THEIR NAME
   XLII. THE RETURN
  XLIII. THE SANDS OF EPPLE
   XLIV. THE EPILOGUE




PART I




The Nest of the Sparrowhawk

CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE OF A KENTISH SQUIRE


Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy folded his hands before him ere he spoke:

"Nay! but I tell thee, woman, that the Lord hath no love for such
frivolities! and alack! but 'tis a sign of the times that an English
Squire should favor such evil ways."

"Evil ways? The Lord love you, Master Hymn-of-Praise, and pray do you
call half an hour at the skittle alley 'evil ways'?"

"Aye, evil it is to indulge our sinful bodies in such recreation as doth
not tend to the glorification of the Lord and the sanctification of our
immortal souls."

He who sermonized thus unctuously and with eyes fixed with stern
disapproval on the buxom wench before him, was a man who had passed the
meridian of life not altogether--it may be surmised--without having
indulged in some recreations which had not always the sanctification of
his own immortal soul for their primary object. The bulk of his figure
testified that he was not averse to good cheer, and there was a certain
hidden twinkle underlying the severe expression of his eyes as they
rested on the pretty face and round figure of Mistress Charity that did
not necessarily tend to the glorification of the Lord.

Apparently, however, the admonitions of Master Hymn-of-Praise made but a
scanty impression on the young girl's mind, for she regarded him with a
mixture of amusement and contempt as she shrugged her plump shoulders
and said with sudden irrelevance:

"Have you had your dinner yet, Master Busy?"

"'Tis sinful to address a single Christian person as if he or she were
several," retorted the man sharply. "But I'll tell thee in confidence,
mistress, that I have not partaken of a single drop more comforting than
cold water the whole of to-day. Mistress de Chavasse mixed the
sack-posset with her own hands this morning, and locked it in the
cellar, of which she hath rigorously held the key. Ten minutes ago when
she placed the bowl on this table, she called my attention to the fact
that the delectable beverage came to within three inches of the brim.
Meseems I shall have to seek for a less suspicious, more
Christian-spirited household, whereon to bestow in the near future my
faithful services."

Hardly had Master Hymn-of-Praise finished speaking when he turned very
sharply round and looked with renewed sternness--wholly untempered by a
twinkle this time--in the direction whence he thought a suppressed
giggle had just come to his ears. But what he saw must surely have
completely reassured him; there was no suggestion of unseemly ribaldry
about the young lad who had been busy laying out the table with spoons
and mugs, and was at this moment vigorously--somewhat ostentatiously,
perhaps--polishing a carved oak chair, bending to his task in a manner
which fully accounted for the high color in his cheeks.

He had long, lanky hair of a pale straw-color, a thin face and high
cheek-bones, and was dressed--as was also Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy--in
a dark purple doublet and knee breeches, all looking very much the worse
for wear; the brown tags and buttons with which these garments had
originally been roughly adorned were conspicuous in a great many places
by their absence, whilst all those that remained were mere skeletons of
their former selves.

The plain collars and cuffs which relieved the dull color of the men's
doublets were of singularly coarse linen not beyond reproach as to
cleanliness, and altogether innocent of starch; whilst the thick brown
worsted stockings displayed many a hole through which the flesh peeped,
and the shoes of roughly tanned leather were down at heel and worn
through at the toes.

Undoubtedly even in these days of more than primitive simplicity and of
sober habiliments Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy, butler at Acol Court in
the county of Kent, and his henchman, Master Courage Toogood, would have
been conspicuous for the shabbiness and poverty of the livery which they
wore.

The hour was three in the afternoon. Outside a glorious July sun spread
radiance and glow over an old-fashioned garden, over tall yew hedges,
and fantastic forms of green birds and heads of beasts carefully cut and
trimmed, over clumps of late roses and rough tangles of marguerites and
potentillas, of stiff zinnias and rich-hued snapdragons.

Through the open window came the sound of wood knocking against wood, of
exclamations of annoyance or triumph as the game proceeded, and every
now and then a ripple of prolonged laughter, girlish, fresh, pure as the
fragrant air, clear as the last notes of the cuckoo before he speaks his
final farewell to summer.

Every time that echo of youth and gayety penetrated into the
oak-raftered dining-room, Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy pursed his thick
lips in disapproval, whilst the younger man, had he dared, would no
doubt have gone to the window, and leaning out as far as safety would
permit, have tried to catch a glimpse of the skittle alley and of a
light-colored kirtle gleaming among the trees. But as it was he caught
the older man's stern eyes fixed reprovingly upon him, he desisted from
his work of dusting and polishing, and, looking up to the heavy oak-beam
above him, he said with becoming fervor:

"Lord! how beautifully thou dost speak, Master Busy!"

"Get on with thy work, Master Courage," retorted the other relentlessly,
"and mix not thine unruly talk with the wise sayings of thy betters."

"My work is done, Master."

"Go fetch the pasties then, the quality will be in directly," rejoined
the other peremptorily, throwing a scrutinizing look at the table,
whereon a somewhat meager collation of cherries, raspberries and
gooseberries and a more generous bowl of sack-posset had been arranged
by Mistress Charity and Master Courage under his own supervision.

"Doubtless, doubtless," here interposed the young maid somewhat
hurriedly, desirous perhaps of distracting the grave butler's attention
from the mischievous oglings of the lad as he went out of the room, "as
you remark--hem--as thou remarkest, this place of service is none to the
liking of such as ... thee ..."

She threw him a coy glance from beneath well-grown lashes, which caused
the saintly man to pass his tongue over his lips, an action which of a
surety had not the desire for spiritual glory for its mainspring. With
dainty hands Mistress Charity busied herself with the delicacies upon
the table. She adjusted a gooseberry which seemed inclined to tumble,
heaped up the currants into more graceful pyramids. Womanlike, whilst
her eyes apparently followed the motions of her hands they nevertheless
took stock of Master Hymn-of-Praise's attitude with regard to herself.

She knew that in defiance of my Lord Protector and all his Puritans she
was looking her best this afternoon: though her kirtle was as threadbare
as Master Courage's breeches it was nevertheless just short enough to
display to great advantage her neatly turned ankle and well-arched foot
on which the thick stockings--well-darned--and shabby shoes sat not at
all amiss.

Her kerchief was neatly folded, white and slightly starched, her cuffs
immaculately and primly turned back just above her round elbow and
shapely arm.

On the whole Mistress Charity was pleased with her own appearance. Sir
Marmaduke de Chavasse and the mistress were seeing company this
afternoon, and the neighboring Kentish squires who had come to play
skittles and to drink sack-posset might easily find a less welcome sight
than that of the serving maid at Acol Court.

"As for myself," now resumed Mistress Charity, after a slight pause,
during which she had felt Master Busy's admiring gaze fixed persistently
upon her, "as for myself, I'll seek service with a lady less like to
find such constant fault with a hard-working maid."

Master Courage had just returned carrying a large dish heaped up with
delicious looking pasties fresh from the oven, brown and crisp with
butter, and ornamented with sprigs of burrage which made them appear
exceedingly tempting.

Charity took the dish from the lad and heavy as it was, she carried it
to the table and placed it right in the very center of it. She
rearranged the sprigs of burrage, made a fresh disposition of the
baskets of fruit, whilst both the men watched her open-mouthed, agape at
so much loveliness and grace.

"And," she added significantly, looking with ill-concealed covetousness
at the succulent pasties, "where there's at least one dog or cat about
the place."

"I know not, mistress," said Hymn-of-Praise, "that thou wast over-fond
of domestic pets ... 'Tis sinful to ..."

"La! Master Busy, you ... hem ... thou mistakest my meaning. I have no
love for such creatures--but without so much as a kitten about the
house, prithee how am I to account to my mistress for the pasties and
... and comfits ... not to speak of breakages."

"There is always Master Courage," suggested Hymn-of-Praise, with a
movement of the left eyelid which in the case of any one less saintly
might have been described as a sly wink.

"That there is not," interrupted the lad decisively; "my stomach rebels
against comfits, and sack-posset could never be laid to my door."

"I give thee assurance, Master Busy," concluded the young girl, "that
the county of Kent no longer suits my constitution. 'Tis London for me,
and thither will I go next year."

"'Tis a den of wickedness," commented Busy sententiously, "in spite of
my Lord Protector, who of a truth doth turn his back on the Saints and
hath even allowed the great George Fox and some of the Friends to
languish in prison, whilst profligacy holds undisputed sway. Master
Courage, meseems those mugs need washing a second time," he added, with
sudden irrelevance. "Take them to the kitchen, and do not let me set
eyes on thee until they shine like pieces of new silver."

Master Courage would have either resisted the order altogether, or at
any rate argued the point of the cleanliness of the mugs, had he dared;
but the saintly man possessed on occasions a heavy hand, and he also
wore boots which had very hard toes, and the lad realized from the
peremptory look in the butler's eyes that this was an occasion when both
hand and boot would serve to emphasize Master Busy's orders with
unpleasant force if he himself were at all slow to obey.

He tried to catch Charity's eye, but was made aware once more of the
eternal truth that women are perverse and fickle creatures, for she
would not look at him, and seemed absorbed in the rearrangement of her
kerchief.

With a deep sigh which should have spoken volumes to her adamantine
heart, Courage gathered all the mugs together by their handles, and
reluctantly marched out of the room once more.

Hymn-of-Praise Busy waited a moment or two until the clattering of the
pewter died away in the distance, then he edged a little closer to the
table whereat Mistress Charity seemed still very busy with the fruit,
and said haltingly:

"Didst thou really wish to go, mistress ... to leave thy fond, adoring
Hymn-of-Praise ... to go, mistress? ... and to break my heart?"

Charity's dainty head--with its tiny velvet cap edged with lawn which
hardly concealed sufficiently the wealth of her unruly brown hair--sank
meditatively upon her left shoulder.

"Lord, Master Busy," she said demurely, "how was a poor maid to know
that you meant it earnestly?"

"Meant it earnestly?"

"Yes ... a new kirtle ... a gold ring ... flowers ... and sack-posset
and pasties to all the guests," she explained. "Is that what you mean
... hem ... what _thou_, meanest, Master Busy?"

"Of a surety, mistress ... and if thou wouldst allow me to ... to ..."

"To what, Master Busy?"

"To salute thee," said the saintly man, with a becoming blush, "as the
Lord doth allow his creatures to salute one another ... with a chaste
kiss, mistress."

Then as she seemed to demur, he added by way of persuasion:

"I am not altogether a poor man, mistress; and there is that in my
coffer upstairs put by, as would please thee in the future."

"Nay! I was not thinking of the money, Master Busy," said this daughter
of Eve, coyly, as she held a rosy cheek out in the direction of the
righteous man.

'Tis the duty even of a veracious chronicler to draw a discreet veil
over certain scenes full of blissful moments for those whom he portrays.

There are no data extant as to what occurred during the next few
seconds in the old oak-beamed dining-room of Acol Court in the Island of
Thanet. Certain it is that when next we get a peep at Master
Hymn-of-Praise Busy and Mistress Charity Haggett, they are standing side
by side, he looking somewhat shame-faced in the midst of his obvious
joy, and she supremely unconcerned, once more absorbed in the apparently
never-ending adornment of the refreshment table.

"Thou'lt have no cause to regret this, mistress," said Busy
complacently, "we will be married this very autumn, and I have it in my
mind--an it please the Lord--to go up to London and take secret service
under my Lord Protector himself."

"Secret service, Master Busy ... hem ... I mean Hymn-of-Praise, dear ...
secret service? ... What may that be?"

"'Tis a noble business, Charity," he replied, "and one highly commended
by the Lord: the business of tracking the wicked to their lair, of
discovering evil where 'tis hidden in dark places, conspiracies against
my Lord Protector, adherence to the cause of the banished tyrants and
... and ... so forth."

"Sounds like spying to me," she remarked curtly.

"Spying? ... Spying, didst thou say?" he exclaimed indignantly. "Fie on
thee, Charity, for the thought! Secret service under my Lord Protector
'tis called, and a highly lucrative business too, and one for which I
have remarkable aptitude."

"Indeed?"

"Aye! See the manner in which I find things out, mistress. This house
now ... thou wouldst think 'tis but an ordinary house ... eh?"

His manner changed; the saintliness vanished from his attitude; the
expression of his face became sly and knowing. He came nearer to
Charity, took hold of her wrist, whilst he raised one finger to his
lips.

"Thou wouldst think 'tis an ordinary house ... wouldst thou not?" he
repeated, sinking his voice to a whisper, murmuring right into her ear
so that his breath blew her hair about, causing it to tickle her cheek.

She shuddered with apprehension. His manner was so mysterious.

"Yes ... yes ..." she murmured, terrified.

"But I tell thee that there's something going on," he added
significantly.

"La, Master Busy ... you ... you terrify me!" she said, on the verge of
tears. "What could there be going on?"

Master Busy raised both his hands and with the right began counting off
the fingers of the left.

"Firstly," he began solemnly, "there's an heiress! secondly our
master--poor as a church mouse--thirdly a young scholar--secretary, they
call him, though he writes no letters, and is all day absorbed in his
studies ... Well, mistress," he concluded, turning a triumphant gaze on
her, "tell me, prithee, what happens?"

"What happens, Master Hymn-of-Praise? ... I do not understand. What
does happen?"

"I'll tell thee," he replied sententiously, "when I have found out; but
mark my words, mistress, there's something going on in this house ...
Hush! not a word to that young jackanapes," he added as a distant
clatter of pewter mugs announced the approach of Master Courage. "Watch
with me, mistress, thou'lt perceive something. And when I have found
out, 'twill be the beginning of our fortunes."

Once more he placed a warning finger on his lips; once more he gave
Mistress Charity a knowing wink, and her wrist an admonitory pressure,
then he resumed his staid and severe manner, his saintly mien and
somewhat nasal tones, as from the gay outside world beyond the
window-embrasure the sound of many voices, the ripple of young laughter,
the clink of heeled boots on the stone-flagged path, proclaimed the
arrival of the quality.




CHAPTER II

ON A JULY AFTERNOON


In the meanwhile in a remote corner of the park the quality was
assembled round the skittle-alley.

Imagine Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse standing there, as stiff a Roundhead
as ever upheld my Lord Protector and his Puritanic government in this
remote corner of the county of Kent: dour in manner, harsh-featured and
hollow-eyed, dressed in dark doublet and breeches wholly void of tags,
ribands or buttons. His closely shorn head is flat at the back, square
in front, his clean-shaven lips though somewhat thick are always held
tightly pressed together. Not far from him sits on a rough wooden seat,
Mistress Amelia Editha de Chavasse, widow of Sir Marmaduke's elder
brother, a good-looking woman still, save for the look of discontent,
almost of suppressed rebellion, apparent in the perpetual dark frown
between the straight brows, in the downward curve of the well-chiseled
mouth, and in the lowering look which seems to dwell for ever in the
handsome dark eyes.

Dame Harrison, too, was there: the large and portly dowager, florid of
face, dictatorial in manner, dressed in the supremely unbecoming style
prevalent at the moment, when everything that was beautiful in art as
well as in nature was condemned as sinful and ungodly; she wore the dark
kirtle and plain, ungainly bodice with its hard white kerchief folded
over her ample bosom; her hair was parted down the middle and brushed
smoothly and flatly to her ears, where but a few curls were allowed to
escape with well-regulated primness from beneath the horn-comb, and the
whole appearance of her looked almost grotesque, surmounted as it was by
the modish high-peaked beaver hat, a marvel of hideousness and
discomfort, since the small brim afforded no protection against the sun,
and the tall crown was a ready prey to the buffetings of the wind.

Mistress Fairsoul Pyncheon too, was there, the wife of the Squire of
Ashe; thin and small, a contrast to Dame Harrison in her mild and
somewhat fussy manner; her plain petticoat, too, was embellished with
paniers, and in spite of the heat of the day she wore a tippet edged
with fur: both of which frivolous adornments had obviously stirred up
the wrath of her more Puritanical neighbor.

Then there were the men: busy at this moment with hurling wooden balls
along the alley, at the further end of which a hollow-eyed scraggy
youth, in shirt and rough linen trousers, was employed in propping up
again the fallen nine-pins. Squire John Boatfield had ridden over from
Eastry, Sir Timothy Harrison had come in his aunt's coach, and young
Squire Pyncheon with his doting mother.

And in the midst of all these sober folk, of young men in severe
garments, of portly dames and frowning squires, a girlish figure,
young, alert, vigorous, wearing with the charm of her own youth and
freshness the unbecoming attire, which disfigured her elders yet seemed
to set off her own graceful form, her dainty bosom and pretty arms. Her
kirtle, too, was plain, and dull in color, of a soft dovelike gray,
without adornment of any kind, but round her shoulders her kerchief was
daintily turned, edged with delicate lace, and showing through its filmy
folds peeps of her own creamy skin.

'Twas years later that Sir Peter Lely painted Lady Sue when she was a
great lady and the friend of the Queen: she was beautiful then, in the
full splendor of her maturer charms, but never so beautiful as she was
on that hot July afternoon in the year of our Lord 1657, when, heated
with the ardor of the game, pleased undoubtedly with the adulation which
surrounded her on every side, she laughed and chatted with the men,
teased the women, her cheeks aglow, her eyes bright, her brown
hair--persistently unruly--flying in thick curls over her neck and
shoulders.

"A remarkable talent, good Sir Marmaduke," Dame Harrison was saying to
her host, as she cast a complacent eye on her nephew, who had just
succeeded in overthrowing three nine-pins at one stroke: "Sir Timothy
hath every aptitude for outdoor pursuits, and though my Lord Protector
deems all such recreations sinful, yet do I think they tend to the
development of muscular energy, which later on may be placed at the
service of the Commonwealth."

Sir Timothy Harrison at this juncture had the misfortune of expending
his muscular energy in hitting Squire Boatfield violently on the shin
with an ill-aimed ball.

"Damn!" ejaculated the latter, heedless of the strict fines imposed by
my Lord Protector on unseemly language. "I ... verily beg the ladies'
pardon ... but ... this young jackanapes nearly broke my shin-bone."

There certainly had been an exclamation of horror on the part of the
ladies at Squire Boatfield's forcible expression of annoyance, Dame
Harrison taking no pains to conceal her disapproval.

"Horrid, coarse creature, this neighbor of yours, good Sir Marmaduke,"
she said with her usual air of decision. "Meseems he is not fit company
for your ward."

"Dear Squire Boatfield," sighed Mistress Pyncheon, who was evidently
disposed to be more lenient, "how good-humoredly he bears it! Clumsy
people should not be trusted in a skittle alley," she added in a mild
way, which seemed to be peculiarly exasperating to Dame Harrison's
irascible temper.

"I pray you, Sir Timothy," here interposed Lady Sue, trying to repress
the laughter which would rise to her lips, "forgive poor Squire John.
You scarce can expect him to moderate his language under such
provocation."

"Oh! his insults leave me completely indifferent," said the young man
with easy unconcern, "his calling me a jackanapes doth not of necessity
make me one."

"No!" retorted Squire Boatfield, who was still nursing his shin-bone,
"maybe not, Sir Timothy, but it shows how observant I am."

"Oliver, pick up Lady Sue's handkerchief," came in mild accents from
Mistress Pyncheon.

"Quite unnecessary, good mistress," rejoined Dame Harrison decisively,
"Sir Timothy has already seen it."

And while the two young men made a quick and not altogether successful
dive for her ladyship's handkerchief, colliding vigorously with one
another in their endeavor to perform this act of gallantry
single-handed, Lady Sue gazed down on them, with good-humored contempt,
laughter and mischief dancing in her eyes. She knew that she was good to
look at, that she was rich, and that she had the pick of the county,
aye, of the South of England, did she desire to wed. Perhaps she thought
of this, even whilst she laughed at the antics of her bevy of courtiers,
all anxious to win her good graces.

Yet even as she laughed, her face suddenly clouded over, a strange,
wistful look came into her eyes, and her laughter was lost in a quick,
short sigh.

A young man had just crossed the tiny rustic bridge which spanned the
ha-ha dividing the flower-garden from the uncultivated park. He walked
rapidly through the trees, towards the skittle alley, and as he came
nearer, the merry lightheartedness seemed suddenly to vanish from Lady
Sue's manner: the ridiculousness of the two young men at her feet,
glaring furiously at one another whilst fighting for her handkerchief,
seemed now to irritate her; she snatched the bit of delicate linen from
their hands, and turned somewhat petulantly away.

"Shall we continue the game?" she said curtly.

The young man, all the while that he approached, had not taken his eyes
off Lady Sue. Twice he had stumbled against rough bits of root or branch
which he had not perceived in the grass through which he walked. He had
seen her laughing gaily, whilst Squire Boatfield used profane language,
and smile with contemptuous merriment at the two young men at her feet;
he had also seen the change in her manner, the sudden wistful look, the
quick sigh, the irritability and the petulance.

But his own grave face expressed neither disapproval at the one mood nor
astonishment at the other. He walked somewhat like a somnambulist, with
eyes fixed--almost expressionless in the intensity of their gaze.

He was very plainly, even poorly clad, and looked a dark figure even
amongst these soberly appareled gentry. The grass beneath his feet had
deadened the sound of his footsteps but Sir Marmaduke had apparently
perceived him, for he beckoned to him to approach.

"What is it, Lambert?" he asked kindly.

"Your letter to Master Skyffington, Sir Marmaduke," replied the young
man, "will you be pleased to sign it?"

"Will it not keep?" said Sir Marmaduke.

"Yes, an you wish it, Sir. I fear I have intruded. I did not know you
were busy."

The young man had a harsh voice, and a strange brusqueness of manner
which somehow suggested rebellion against the existing conditions of
life. He no longer looked at Lady Sue now, but straight at Sir
Marmaduke, speaking the brief apology between his teeth, without opening
his mouth, as if the words hurt him when they passed his lips.

"You had best speak to Master Skyffington himself about the business,"
rejoined Sir Marmaduke, not heeding the mumbled apology, "he will be
here anon."

He turned abruptly away, and the young man once more left to himself,
silently and mechanically moved again in the direction of the house.

"You will join us in a bowl of sack-posset, Master Lambert," said
Mistress de Chavasse, striving to be amiable.

"You are very kind," he said none too genially, "in about half-an-hour
if you will allow me. There is another letter yet to write."

No one had taken much notice of him. Even in these days when kingship
and House of Lords were abolished, the sense of social inequality
remained keen. To this coterie of avowed Republicans, young Richard
Lambert--secretary or what-not to Sir Marmaduke, a paid dependent at any
rate--was not worth more than a curt nod of the head, a condescending
acknowledgment of his existence at best.

But Lady Sue had not even bestowed the nod. She had not actually taken
notice of his presence when he came; the wistful look had vanished as
soon as the young man's harsh voice had broken on her ear: she did not
look on him now that he went.

She was busy with her game. Nathless her guardian's secretary was of no
more importance in the rich heiress's sight than that mute row of
nine-pins at the end of the alley, nor was there, mayhap, in her mind
much social distinction between the hollow-eyed lad who set them up
stolidly from time to time, and the silent young student who wrote those
letters which Sir Marmaduke had not known how to spell.




CHAPTER III

THE EXILE


But despite outward indifference, with the brief appearance of the
soberly-garbed young student upon the scene and his abrupt and silent
departure, all the zest seemed to have gone out of Lady Sue's mood.

The ingenuous flatteries of her little court irritated her now: she no
longer felt either amused or pleased by the extravagant compliments
lavished upon her beauty and skill by portly Squire John, by Sir Timothy
Harrison or the more diffident young Squire Pyncheon.

"Of a truth, I sometimes wish, Lady Sue, that I could find out if you
have any faults," remarked Squire Boatfield unctuously.

"Nay, Squire," she retorted sharply, "pray try to praise me to my female
friends."

In vain did Mistress Pyncheon admonish her son to be more bold in his
wooing.

"You behave like a fool, Oliver," she said meekly.

"But, Mother ..."

"Go, make yourself pleasing to her ladyship."

"But, Mother ..."

"I pray you, my son," she retorted with unusual acerbity, "do you want a
million or do you not?"

"But, Mother ..."

"Then go at once and get it, ere that fool Sir Timothy or the odious
Boatfield capture it under your very nose."

"But, Mother ..."

"Go! say something smart to her at once ... talk about your gray mare
... she is over fond of horses ..."

Then as the young Squire, awkward and clumsy in his manner, more
accustomed to the company of his own servants than to that of highborn
ladies, made sundry unfortunate attempts to enchain the attention of the
heiress, his worthy mother turned with meek benignity to Sir Marmaduke.

"A veritable infatuation, good Sir Marmaduke," she said with a sigh,
"quite against my interests, you know. I had no thought to see the dear
lad married so soon, nor to give up my home at the Dene yet, in favor of
a new mistress. Not but that Oliver is not a good son to his
mother--such a good lad!--and such a good husband he would be to any
girl who ..."

"A strange youth that secretary of yours, Sir Marmaduke," here
interposed Dame Harrison in her loud, dictatorial voice, breaking in on
Mistress Pyncheon's dithyrambs, "modest he appears to be, and silent
too: a paragon meseems!"

She spoke with obvious sarcasm, casting covert glances at Lady Sue to
see if she heard.

Sir Marmaduke shrugged his shoulders.

"Lambert is very industrious," he said curtly.

"I thought secretaries never did anything but suck the ends of their
pens," suggested Mistress Pyncheon mildly.

"Sometimes they make love to their employer's daughter," retorted Dame
Harrison spitefully, for Lady Sue was undoubtedly lending an ear to the
conversation now that it had the young secretary for object. She was not
watching Squire Boatfield who was wielding the balls just then with
remarkable prowess, and at this last remark from the portly old dame,
she turned sharply round and said with a strange little air of
haughtiness which somehow became her very well:

"But then you see, mistress, Master Lambert's employer doth not possess
a daughter of his own--only a ward ... mayhap that is the reason why his
secretary performs his duties so well in other ways."

Her cheeks were glowing as she said this, and she looked quite defiant,
as if challenging these disagreeable mothers and aunts of
fortune-hunting youths to cast unpleasant aspersions on a friend whom
she had taken under her special protection.

Sir Marmaduke looked at her keenly; a deep frown settled between his
eyes at sight of her enthusiasm. His face suddenly looked older, and
seemed more dour, more repellent than before.

"Sue hath such a romantic temperament," he said dryly, speaking between
his teeth and as if with an effort. "Lambert's humble origin has fired
her imagination. He has no parents and his elder brother is the
blacksmith down at Acol; his aunt, who seems to have had charge of the
boys ever since they were children, is just a common old woman who lives
in the village--a strict adherent, so I am told, of this new sect, whom
Justice Bennet of Derby hath so justly nicknamed 'Quakers.' They talk
strangely, these people, and believe in a mighty queer fashion. I know
not if Lambert be of their creed, for he does not use the 'thee' and
'thou' when speaking as do all Quakers, so I am told; but his empty
pockets, a smattering of learning which he has picked up the Lord knows
where, and a plethora of unspoken grievances, have all proved a sure
passport to Lady Sue's sympathy."

"Nay, but your village of Acol seems full of queer folk, good Sir
Marmaduke," said Mistress Pyncheon. "I have heard talk among my servants
of a mysterious prince hailed from France, who has lately made one of
your cottages his home."

"Oh! ah! yes!" quoth Sir Marmaduke lightly, "the interesting exile from
the Court of King Louis. I did not know that his fame had reached you,
mistress."

"A French prince?--in this village?" exclaimed Dame Harrison sharply,
"and pray, good Sir Marmaduke, where did you go a-fishing to get such a
bite?"

"Nay!" replied Sir Marmaduke with a short laugh, "I had naught to do
with his coming; he wandered to Acol from Dover about six months ago it
seems, and found refuge in the Lamberts' cottage, where he has remained
ever since. A queer fellow I believe. I have only seen him once or
twice in my fields ... in the evening, usually ..."

Perhaps there was just a curious note of irritability in Sir Marmaduke's
voice as he spoke of this mysterious inhabitant of the quiet village of
Acol; certain it is that the two matchmaking old dames seemed smitten at
one and the same time with a sense of grave danger to their schemes.

An exile from France, a prince who hides his identity and his person in
a remote Kentish village, and a girl with a highly imaginative
temperament like Lady Sue! here was surely a more definite, a more
important rival to the pretensions of homely country youths like Sir
Timothy Harrison or Squire Pyncheon, than even the student of humble
origin whose brother was a blacksmith, whose aunt was a Quakeress, and
who wandered about the park of Acol with hollow eyes fixed longingly on
the much-courted heiress.

Dame Harrison and Mistress Pyncheon both instinctively turned a
scrutinizing gaze on her ladyship. Neither of them was perhaps
ordinarily very observant, but self-interest had made them keen, and it
would have been impossible not to note the strange atmosphere which
seemed suddenly to pervade the entire personality of the young girl.

There was nothing in her face now expressive of whole-hearted
partisanship for an absent friend, such as she had displayed when she
felt that young Lambert was being unjustly sneered at; rather was it a
kind of entranced and arrested thought, as if her mind, having come in
contact with one all-absorbing idea, had ceased to function in any other
direction save that one.

Her cheeks no longer glowed, they seemed pale and transparent like those
of an ascetic; her lips were slightly parted, her eyes appeared
unconscious of everything round her, and gazing at something enchanting
beyond that bank of clouds which glimmered, snow-white, through the
trees.

"But what in the name of common sense is a French prince doing in Acol
village?" ejaculated Dame Harrison in her most strident voice, which had
the effect of drawing every one's attention to herself and to Sir
Marmaduke, whom she was thus addressing.

The men ceased playing and gathered nearer. The spell was broken. That
strange and mysterious look vanished from Lady Sue's face; she turned
away from the speakers and idly plucked a few bunches of acorn from an
overhanging oak.

"Of a truth," replied Sir Marmaduke, whose eyes were still steadily
fixed on his ward, "I know as little about the fellow, ma'am, as you do
yourself. He was exiled from France by King Louis for political reasons,
so he explained to the old woman Lambert, with whom he is still lodging.
I understand that he hardly ever sleeps at the cottage, that his
appearances there are short and fitful and that his ways are passing
mysterious.... And that is all I know," he added in conclusion, with a
careless shrug of the shoulders.

"Quite a romance!" remarked Mistress Pyncheon dryly.

"You should speak to him, good Sir Marmaduke," said Dame Harrison
decisively, "you are a magistrate. 'Tis your duty to know more of this
fellow and his antecedents."

"Scarcely that, ma'am," rejoined Sir Marmaduke, "you understand ... I
have a young ward living for the nonce in my house ... she is very rich,
and, I fear me, of a very romantic disposition ... I shall try to get
the man removed from hence, but until that is accomplished, I prefer to
know nothing about him ..."

"How wise of you, good Sir Marmaduke!" quoth Mistress Pyncheon with a
sigh of content.

A sentiment obviously echoed in the hearts of a good many people there
present.

"One knows these foreign adventurers," concluded Sir Marmaduke with
pleasant irony, "with their princely crowns and forlorn causes ... half
a million of English money would no doubt regild the former and bolster
up the latter."

He rose from his seat as he spoke, boldly encountering even as he did
so, a pair of wrathful and contemptuous girlish eyes fixed steadily upon
him.

"Shall we go within?" he said, addressing his guests, and returning his
young ward's gaze haughtily, even commandingly; "a cup of sack-posset
will be welcome after the fatigue of the game. Will you honor my poor
house, mistress? and you, too, ma'am? Gentlemen, you must fight among
yourselves for the privilege of escorting Lady Sue to the house, and if
she prove somewhat disdainful this beautiful summer's afternoon, I pray
you remember that faint heart never won fair lady, and that the citadel
is not worth storming an it is not obdurate."

The suggestion of sack-posset proved vastly to the liking of the merry
company. Mistress de Chavasse who had been singularly silent all the
afternoon, walked quickly in advance of her brother-in-law's guests, no
doubt in order to cast a scrutinizing eye over the arrangements of the
table, which she had entrusted to the servants.

Sir Marmaduke followed at a short distance, escorting the older women,
making somewhat obvious efforts to control his own irritability, and to
impart some sort of geniality to the proceedings.

Then in a noisy group in the rear came the three men still fighting for
the good graces of Lady Sue, whilst she, silent, absorbed, walked
leisurely along, paying no heed to the wrangling of her courtiers, her
fingers tearing up with nervous impatience the delicate cups of the
acorns, which she then threw from her with childish petulance.

And her eyes still sought the distance beyond the boundaries of Sir
Marmaduke's private grounds, there where cornfields and sky and sea were
merged by the summer haze into a glowing line of emerald and purple and
gold.




CHAPTER IV

GRINDING POVERTY


It was about an hour later. Sir Marmaduke's guests had departed, Dame
Harrison in her rickety coach, Mistress Pyncheon in her chaise, whilst
Squire Boatfield was riding his well-known ancient cob.

Everyone had drunk sack-posset, had eaten turkey pasties, and enjoyed
the luscious fruit: the men had striven to be agreeable to the heiress,
the old ladies to be encouraging to their protégés. Sir Marmaduke had
tried to be equally amiable to all, whilst favoring none. He was an
unpopular man in East Kent and he knew it, doing nothing to
counterbalance the unpleasing impression caused invariably by his surly
manner, and his sarcastic, often violent, temper.

Mistress Amelia Editha de Chavasse was now alone with her brother-in-law
in the great bare hall of the Court, Lady Sue having retired to her room
under pretext of the vapors, and young Lambert been finally dismissed
from work for the day.

"You are passing kind to the youth, Marmaduke," said Mistress de
Chavasse meditatively when the young man's darkly-clad figure had
disappeared up the stairs.

She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her head resting against the
carved woodwork. The folds of her simple gown hung primly round her
well-shaped figure. Undoubtedly she was still a very good-looking woman,
though past the hey-day of her youth and beauty. The half-light caused
by the depth of the window embrasure, and the smallness of the glass
panes through which the summer sun hardly succeeded in gaining
admittance, added a certain softness to her chiseled features, and to
the usually hard expression of her large dark eyes.

She was gazing out of the tall window, wherein the several broken panes
were roughly patched with scraps of paper, out into the garden and the
distance beyond, where the sea could be always guessed at, even when not
seen. Sir Marmaduke had his back to the light: he was sitting astride a
low chair, his high-booted foot tapping the ground impatiently, his
fingers drumming a devil's tattoo against the back of the chair.

"Lambert would starve if I did not provide for him," he said with a
sneer. "Adam, his brother, could do naught for him: he is poor as a
church-mouse, poorer even than I--but nathless," he added with a violent
oath, "it strikes everyone as madness that I should keep a secretary
when I scarce can pay the wages of a serving maid."

"'Twere better you paid your servants' wages, Marmaduke," she retorted
harshly, "they were insolent to me just now. Why do you not pay the
girl's arrears to-day?"

"Why do I not climb up to the moon, my dear Editha, and bring down a
few stars with me in my descent," he replied with a shrug of his broad
shoulders. "I have come to my last shilling."

"The Earl of Northallerton cannot live for ever."

"He hath vowed, I believe, that he would do it, if only to spite me. And
by the time that he come to die this accursed Commonwealth will have
abolished all titles and confiscated every estate."

"Hush, Marmaduke," she said, casting a quick, furtive look all round
her, "there may be spies about."

"Nay, I care not," he rejoined roughly, jumping to his feet and kicking
the chair aside so that it struck with a loud crash against the flagged
floor. "'Tis but little good a man gets for cleaving loyally to the
Commonwealth. The sequestrated estates of the Royalists would have been
distributed among the adherents of republicanism, and not held to
bolster up a military dictatorship. Bah!" he continued, allowing his
temper to overmaster him, speaking in harsh tones and with many a
violent oath, "it had been wiser to embrace the Royal cause. The Lord
Protector is sick, so 'tis said. His son Richard hath no backbone, and
the present tyranny is worse than the last. I cannot collect my rents; I
have been given neither reward nor compensation for the help I gave in
'46. So much for their boasted gratitude and their many promises! My
Lord Protector feasts the Dutch ambassadors with music and with wine, my
Lords Ireton and Fairfax and Hutchinson and the accursed lot of canting
Puritans flaunt it in silks and satins, whilst I go about in a ragged
doublet and with holes in my shoes."

"There's Lady Sue," murmured Mistress de Chavasse soothingly.

"Pshaw! the guardianship of a girl who comes of age in three months!"

"You can get another by that time."

"Not I. I am not a sycophant hanging round White Hall! 'Twas sheer good
luck and no merit of mine that got me the guardianship of Sue. Lord
Middlesborough, her kinsman, wanted it; the Courts would have given her
to him, but old Noll thought him too much of a 'gentleman,' whilst I--an
out-at-elbows country squire, was more to my Lord Protector's liking.
'Tis the only thing he ever did for me."

There was intense bitterness and a harsh vein of sarcasm running through
Sir Marmaduke's talk. It was the speech of a disappointed man, who had
hoped, and striven, and fought once; had raised longing hands towards
brilliant things and sighed after glory, or riches, or fame, but whose
restless spirit had since been tamed, crushed under the heavy weight of
unsatisfied ambition.

Poverty--grinding, unceasing, uninteresting poverty, had been Sir
Marmaduke's relentless tormentor ever since he had reached man's estate.
His father, Sir Jeremy de Chavasse, had been poor before him. The
younger son of that Earl of Northallerton who cut such a brilliant
figure at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, Jeremy had married Mistress
Spanton of Acol Court, who had brought him a few acres of land heavily
burdened with mortgage as her dowry. They were a simple-minded,
unostentatious couple who pinched and scraped and starved that their two
sons might keep up the appearances of gentlemen at the Court of King
Charles.

But both the young men seemed to have inherited from their brilliant
grandfather luxurious tastes and a love of gambling and of show--but
neither his wealth nor yet his personal charm of manner. The eldest,
Rowland, however, soon disappeared from the arena of life. He married
when scarce twenty years of age a girl who had been a play-actress. This
marriage nearly broke his doting mother's heart, and his own, too, for
the matter of that, for the union was a most unhappy one. Rowland de
Chavasse died very soon after, unreconciled to his father and mother,
who refused to see him or his family, even on his deathbed.

Jeremy de Chavasse's few hopes now centered on his younger son,
Marmaduke. In order to enable the young man to remain in London, to mix
freely and to hold his own in that set into which family traditions had
originally gained him admittance, the fond mother and indulgent father
denied themselves the very necessities of life.

Marmaduke took everything that was given him, whilst chafing at the
paucity of his allowance. Determined to cut a figure at Court, he spent
two years and most of his mother's dowry in a vain attempt to capture
the heart of one or the other of the rich heiresses who graced the
entourage of Charles I.

But Nature who had given Marmaduke boundless ambition, had failed to
bestow on him those attributes which would have helped him on towards
its satisfaction. He was neither sufficiently prepossessing to please an
heiress, nor sufficiently witty and brilliant to catch the royal eye or
the favor of his uncle, the present Earl of Northallerton. His efforts
in the direction of advantageous matrimony had earned for him at Court
the nickname of "The Sparrowhawk." But even these efforts had soon to be
relinquished for want of the wherewithal.

The doting mother no longer could supply him with a sufficiency of money
to vie with the rich gallants at the Court, and the savings which Sir
Jeremy had been patiently accumulating with a view to freeing the Acol
estates from mortgage went instead to rescue young Marmaduke from a
debtor's prison.

Poor Sir Jeremy did not long survive his disappointment. Marmaduke
returned to Acol Court only to find his mother a broken invalid, and his
father dead.

Since then it had been a perpetual struggle against poverty and debt, a
bitter revolt against Fate, a burning desire to satisfy ambition which
had received so serious a check.

When the great conflict broke out between King and Parliament, he threw
himself into it, without zest and without conviction, embracing the
cause of the malcontents with a total lack of enthusiasm, merely out of
disappointment--out of hatred for the brilliant Court and circle in
which he had once hoped to become a prominent figure.

He fought under Ireton, was commended as a fairly good soldier, though
too rebellious to be very reliable, too self-willed to be wholly
trusted.

Even in these days of brilliant reputations quickly made, he remained
obscure and practically unnoticed. Advancement never came his way and
whilst younger men succeeded in attracting the observant eye of old
Noll, he was superseded at every turn, passed over--anon forgotten.

When my Lord Protector's entourage was formed, the Household organized,
no one thought of the Sparrowhawk for any post that would have satisfied
his desires. Once more he cursed his own poverty. Money--the want of
it--he felt was at the root of all his disappointments. A burning desire
to obtain it at any cost, even that of honor, filled his entire being,
his mind, his soul, his thoughts, every nerve in his body. Money, and
social prestige! To be somebody at Court or elsewhere, politically,
commercially,--he cared not. To handle money and to command attention!

He became wary, less reckless, striving to obtain by diplomatic means
that which he had once hoped to snatch by sheer force of personality.
The Court of Chancery having instituted itself sole guardian and
administrator of the revenues and fortunes of minors whose fathers had
fought on the Royalist side, and were either dead or in exile, and
arrogating unto itself the power to place such minors under the
tutelage of persons whose loyalty to the Commonwealth was undoubted, Sir
Marmaduke bethought himself of applying for one of these official
guardianships which were known to be very lucrative and moreover,
practically sinecures.

Fate for once favored him; a half-contemptuous desire to do something
for this out-at-elbows Kentish squire who had certainly been a loyal
adherent of the Commonwealth, caused my Lord Protector to favor his
application. The rich daughter of the Marquis of Dover was placed under
the guardianship of Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse with an allowance of
£4,000 a year for her maintenance, until she came of age. A handsome
fortune and stroke of good luck for a wise and prudent man:--a drop in
an ocean of debts, difficulties and expensive tastes, in the case of Sir
Marmaduke.

A prolonged visit to London with a view either of gaining a foothold in
the new Court, or of drawing the attention of the malcontents, of Monk
and his party, or even of the Royalists, to himself, resulted in further
debts, in more mortgages, more bitter disappointments.

The man himself did not please. His personality was unsympathetic; Lady
Sue's money which he now lavished right and left, bought neither
friendship nor confidence. He joined all the secret clubs which in
defiance of Cromwell's rigid laws against betting and gambling, were the
resort of all the smart gentlemen in the town. Ill-luck at hazard and
dice pursued him: he was a bad loser, quarrelsome and surly. His
ambition had not taught him the salutary lesson of how to make friends
in order to attain his desires.

His second return to the ancestral home was scarcely less disastrous
than the first; a mortgage on his revenues as guardian of Lady Sue
Aldmarshe just saved him this time from the pursuit of his creditors,
and this mortgage he had only obtained through false statements as to
his ward's age.

As he told his sister-in-law a moment ago, he was at his last gasp. He
had perhaps just begun to realize that he would never succeed through
the force of his own individuality. Therefore, money had become a still
more imperative necessity to him. He was past forty now. Disappointed
ambition and an ever rebellious spirit had left severe imprints on his
face: his figure was growing heavy, his prominent lips, unadorned by a
mustache, had an unpleasant downward droop, and lately he had even
noticed that the hair on the top of his head was not so thick as of
yore.

The situation was indeed getting desperate, since Lady Sue would be of
age in three months, when all revenues for her maintenance would cease.

"Methinks her million will go to one of those young jackanapes who hang
about her," sighed Mistress de Chavasse, with almost as much bitterness
as Sir Marmaduke had shown.

Her fortunes were in a sense bound up with those of her brother-in-law.
He had been most unaccountably kind to her of late, a kindness which his
many detractors attributed either to an infatuation for his brother's
widow, or to a desire to further irritate his uncle the Earl of
Northallerton, who--a rigid Puritan himself--hated the play-actress and
her connection with his own family.

"Can naught be done, Marmaduke?" she asked after a slight pause, during
which she had watched anxiously the restless figure of her
brother-in-law as he paced up and down the narrow hall.

"Can you suggest anything, my dear Editha?" he retorted roughly.

"Pshaw!" she ejaculated with some impatience, "you are not so old, but
you could have made yourself agreeable to the wench."

"You think that she would have fallen in love with her middle-aged
guardian?" he exclaimed with a harsh, sarcastic laugh. "That girl? ...
with her head full of romantic nonsense ... and I ... in ragged doublet,
with a bald head, and an evil temper ... Bah!!! ... But," he added, with
an unpleasant sneer, "'tis unselfish and disinterested on your part, my
dear Editha, even to suggest it. Sue does not like you. Her being
mistress here would not be conducive to your comfort."

"Nay! 'tis no use going on in this manner any longer, Marmaduke," she
said dejectedly. "Pleasant times will not come my way so long as you
have not a shilling to give me for a new gown, and cannot afford to keep
up my house in London."

She fully expected another retort from him--brutal and unbridled as was
his wont when money affairs were being discussed. He was not accustomed
to curb his violence in her presence. She had been his helpmeet in many
unavowable extravagances, in the days when he was still striving after a
brilliant position in town. There had been certain rumors anent a
gambling den, whereat Mistress de Chavasse had been the presiding spirit
and which had come under the watchful eye of my Lord Protector's spies.

Now she had perforce to share her brother-in-law's poverty. At any rate
he provided a roof over her head. On the advent of Lady Sue Aldmarshe
into his bachelor establishment he called on his sister-in-law for the
part of duenna.

At one time the fair Editha had exercised her undoubted charms over
Marmaduke's violent nature, but latterly she had become a mere butt for
his outbursts of rage. But now to her astonishment, and in response to
her petulant reproach, his fury seemed to fall away from him. He threw
his head back and broke out into uncontrolled, half-sarcastic, almost
defiant laughter.

"How blind you are, my dear Editha," he said with a shrug of his broad
shoulders. "Nay! an I mistake not, in that case there will be some
strange surprises for you within the next three months. I pray you try
and curb your impatience until then, and to bear with the insolence of a
serving wench, 'Twill serve you well, mine oath on that!" he added
significantly.

Then without vouchsafing further explanations of his enigmatic
utterances, he turned on his heel--still laughing apparently at some
pleasing thought--and walked upstairs, leaving her to meditate.




CHAPTER V

THE LEGAL ASPECT


Mistress de Chavasse sat musing, in that high-backed chair, for some
considerable time. Anon Sir Marmaduke once more traversed the hall,
taking no heed of her as he went out into the garden. She watched his
broad figure moving along the path and then crossing the rustic bridge
until it disappeared among the trees of the park.

There was something about his attitude of awhile ago which puzzled her.
And with puzzlement came an inexplicable fear: she had known Marmaduke
in all his moods, but never in such an one as he had displayed before
her just now. There had been a note almost of triumph in the laughter
with which he had greeted her last reproach. The cry of the sparrowhawk
when it seizes its prey.

Triumph in Sir Marmaduke filled her with dread. No one knew better than
she did the hopeless condition of his financial status. Debt--prison
perhaps--was waiting for him at every turn. Yet he seemed triumphant!
She knew him to have reached those confines of irritability and
rebellion against poverty which would cause him to shrink from nothing
for the sake of gaining money. Yet he seemed triumphant!

Instinctively she shuddered as she thought of Sue. She had no cause to
like the girl, yet would she not wish to see her come to harm.

She did not dare avow even to herself the conviction which she had, that
if Sir Marmaduke could gain anything by the young girl's death, he would
not hesitate to ... Nay! she would not even frame that thought.
Marmaduke had been kind to her; she could but hope that temptation such
as that, would never come his way.

Hymn-of-Praise Busy broke in on her meditations. His nasal tones--which
had a singular knack of irritating her as a rule--struck quite
pleasingly on her ear, as a welcome interruption to the conflict of her
thoughts.

"Master Skyffington, ma'am," he said in his usual drawly voice, "he is
on his way to Dover, and desired his respects, an you wish to see him."

"Yes! yes! I'll see Master Skyffington," she said with alacrity, rising
from her chair, "go apprise Sir Marmaduke, and ask Master Skyffington to
come within."

She was all agitation now, eager, excited, and herself went forward to
meet the quaint, little wizened figure which appeared in the doorway.

Master Skyffington, attorney-at-law, was small and thin--looked doubly
so, in fact, in the black clothes which he wore. His eyes were blue and
watery, his manner peculiarly diffident. He seemed to present a
perpetual apology to the world for his own existence therein.

Even now as Mistress de Chavasse seemed really overjoyed to see him, he
backed his meager person out of the doorway as she approached, whereupon
she--impatiently--clutched his arm and dragged him forward into the
hall.

"Sit down there, master," she said, speaking with obvious agitation, and
almost pushing the poor little man off his feet whilst dragging him to a
chair. "Sir Marmaduke will see you anon, but 'twas a kind thought to
come and bring me news."

"Hem! ... hem! ..." stammered Master Skyffington, "I ... that is ... hem
... I left Canterbury this morning and was on my way to Dover ... hem
... this lies on my way, ma'am ... and ..."

"Yes! yes!" she said impatiently, "but you have some news, of course?"

"News! ... news!" he muttered apologetically, and clutching at his
collar, which seemed to be choking him, "what news--er--I pray you,
ma'am?"

"That clew?" she insisted.

"It was very slight," he stammered.

"And it led to naught?"

"Alas!"

Her eagerness vanished. She sank back into her chair and moaned.

"My last hope!" she said dully.

"Nay! nay!" rejoined Master Skyffington quite cheerfully, his courage
seemingly having risen with her despair. "We must not be despondent. The
noble Earl of Northallerton hath interested himself of late in the
search and ..."

But she shrugged her shoulders, whilst a short, bitter laugh escaped her
lips:

"At last?" she said with biting sarcasm. "After twelve years!"

"Nay! but remember, ma'am, that his lordship now is very ill ... and
nigh on seventy years old.... Failing your late husband, Master
Rowland--whom the Lord hath in His keeping--your eldest son is ... hem
... that is ... by law, ma'am, ... and with all respect due to Sir
Marmaduke ... your eldest son is heir to the Earldom."

"And though his lordship hates me, he still prefers that my son should
succeed to his title, rather than Sir Marmaduke whom he abhors."

But that suggestion was altogether too much for poor Master
Skyffington's sense of what was due to so noble a family, and to its
exalted head.

"That is ... er ..." he muttered in supreme discomfort, swallowing great
gulps which rose to his throat at this rash and disrespectful speech
from the ex-actress. "Family feuds ... hem ... er ... very distressing
of a truth ... and ... that is ..."

"I fear me his lordship will be disappointed," she rejoined, quite
heedless of the little attorney's perturbation, "and that under these
circumstances Sir Marmaduke will surely succeed."

"I was about to remark," he rejoined, "that now, with my lord's
help--his wealth and influence ... now, that is, ... that he has
interested himself in the matter ... hem ... we might make fresh
inquiries ... that is ... er ..."

"It will be useless, master. I have done all that is humanly possible. I
loved my boys dearly--and it was because of my love for them that I
placed them under my mother's care.... I loved them, you understand, but
I was living in a gay world in London ... my husband was dead ... I
could do naught for their comfort.... I thought it would be best for
them ..."

It was her turn now to speak humbly, almost apologetically, whilst her
eyes sought those of the simple little attorney, trying to read approval
in his glance, or at any rate an absence of reproof. He was shaking his
head, sighing with visible embarrassment the while. In his innermost
soul, he could find no excuse for the frivolous mother, anxious to avoid
the responsibilities which the Lord Himself had put upon her: anxious to
be rid of her children in order that she might pursue with greater
freedom and ease that life of enjoyment and thoughtlessness which she
craved.

"My mother was a strange woman," continued Mistress de Chavasse
earnestly and placing her small white hand on the black sleeve of the
attorney, "she cared little enough for me, and not at all for London
and for society. She did not understand the many duties that devolve on
a woman of fashion.... And I was that in those days! ... twenty years
ago!"

"Ah! Truly! truly!" sighed Master Skyffington.

"Mayhap she acted according to her own lights.... After some years she
became a convert to that strange new faith ... of the people who call
themselves 'Friends' ... who salute no one with the hat, and who talk so
strangely, saying: 'thee' and 'thou' even when addressing their betters.
One George Fox had a great hold on her. He was quite a youth then, but
she thought him a saint. 'Tis he, methinks, poisoned her mind against
me, and caused her to curse me on her deathbed."

She gave a little shudder--of superstition, perhaps. The maternal
curse--she felt--was mayhap bearing fruit after all. Master
Skyffington's watery eyes expressed gentle sympathy. His calling had
taught him many of the hidden secrets of human nature and of Life: he
guessed that the time--if not already here--was nigh at hand, when this
unfortunate woman would realize the emptiness of her life, and would
begin to reap the bitter harvest of the barren seeds which she had sown.

"Aye! I lay it all at the door of these 'Friends' who turned a mother's
heart against her own daughter," continued Mistress de Chavasse
vehemently. "She never told me that she was sick, sent me neither letter
nor message; only after her death a curt note came to me, writ in her
hand, entrusted to one of her own co-worshipers, a canting, mouthing
creature, who grinned whilst I read the heartless message. My mother had
sent her grandchildren away, so she told me in the letter, when she felt
that the Lord was calling her to Him. She had placed my boys--my boys,
master!--in the care of a trusted 'friend' who would bring them up in
the fear of God, away from the influence of their mother. My boys,
master, remember! ... they were to be brought up in ignorance of their
name--of the very existence of their mother. The 'friend,' doubtless a
fellow Quaker--had agreed to this on my mother's deathbed."

"Hm! 'tis passing strange, and passing sad," said the attorney, with
real sympathy now, for there was a pathetic note of acute sorrow in
Mistress de Chavasse's voice, "but at the time ... hem ... and with
money and influence ... hem ... much might have been done."

"Ah! believe me, master, I did what I could. I was in London then.... I
flew to Canterbury where my mother lived.... I found her dead ... and
the boys gone ... none of the neighbors could tell me whither.... All
they knew was that a woman had been living with my mother of late and
had gone away, taking the boys with her.... My boys, master, and no one
could tell me whither they had gone! I spent what money I had, and Sir
Marmaduke nobly bore his share in the cost of a ceaseless search, as the
Earl of Northallerton would do nothing then to help me."

"Passing strange ... passing sad," murmured Master Skyffington, shaking
his head, "but methinks I recollect ... hem ... some six years ago ... a
quest which led to a clew ... er ... that is ... two young gentlemen
..."

"Impostors, master," she rejoined, "aye! I have heard of many such since
then. At first I used to believe their stories ..."

"At first?" he ejaculated in amazement, "but surely ... hem ... the
faces ... your own sons, ma'am ..."

"Ah! the faces!" she said, whilst a blush of embarrassment, even of
shame, now suffused her pale cheeks. "I mean ... you understand ... I
... I had not seen my boys since they were babes in arms ... they were
ten years old when they were taken away ... but ... but it is nigh on
twenty-two years since I have set eyes on their faces. I would not know
them, if they passed me by."

Tears choked her voice. Shame had added its bitter sting to the agony of
her sorrow. Of a truth it was a terrible epilogue of misery, following
on a life-story of frivolity and of heartlessness which Mistress de
Chavasse had almost unconsciously related to the poor ignorant country
attorney. Desirous at all costs of retaining her freedom, she had parted
from her children with a light heart, glad enough that their
grandmother was willing to relieve her of all responsibility. Time
slipped by whilst she enjoyed herself, danced and flirted, gambled and
played her part in that world of sport and Fashion wherein a mother's
heart was an unnecessary commodity. Ten years are a long while in the
life of an old woman who lives in a remote country town, and sees Death
approaching with slow yet certain stride; but that same decade is but as
a fleeting hour to the woman who is young and who lives for the moment.

The boys had been forgotten long ere they disappeared! Forgotten?
perhaps not!--but their memory put away in a hidden cell of the mind
where other inconvenient thoughts were stored: only to be released and
gazed upon when other more agreeable ones had ceased to fill the brain.

She felt humbled before this simple-minded man, whom she knew she had
shocked by the recital of her callousness. With innate gentleness of
disposition he tried to hide his feelings and to set aside the subject
for the moment.

"Sir Marmaduke was very disinterested, when he aided you in the quest,"
he said meekly, glad to be able to praise one whom he felt it his duty
to respect, "for under present circumstances ... hem! ..."

"I will raise no difficulties in Sir Marmaduke's way," she rejoined,
"there is no doubt in my mind that my boys are dead, else I had had news
of them ere this."

He looked at her keenly--as keenly as he dared with his mild, blue
eyes. It was hard to keep in sympathy with her. Her moods seemed to
change as she spoke of her boys and then of Sir Marmaduke. Her last
remark seemed to argue that her callousness with regard to her sons had
not entirely yielded to softer emotions yet.

"In case of my Lord Northallerton's death," she continued lightly, "I
shall not put in a claim on behalf of any son of mine."

"Whereupon--hem Sir Marmaduke as next-of-kin, would have the enjoyment
of the revenues--and mayhap would have influence enough then to make
good his claim to the title before the House of Lords ..."

He checked himself: looked furtively round and added:

"Provided it please God and my Lord Protector that the House of Lords
come back to Westminster by that time."

"I thank you, master," said Mistress de Chavasse, rising from her chair,
intimating that this interview was now over, "you have told me all that
I wish to know. Let me assure you, that I will not prove ungrateful.
Your services will be amply repaid by whomever succeeds to the title and
revenues of Northallerton. Did you wish to see Sir Marmaduke?"

"I thank you, mistress, not to-day," replied Master Skyffington somewhat
dryly. The lady's promises had not roused his enthusiasm. He would have
preferred to see more definite reward for his labors, for he had worked
faithfully and was substantially out of pocket in this quest after the
two missing young men.

But he was imbued with that deep respect for the family he had served
all his life, which no conflict between privilege and people would ever
eradicate, and though Mistress de Chavasse's origin was of the humblest,
she was nevertheless herself now within the magic circle into which
Master Skyffington never gazed save with the deepest reverence.

He thought it quite natural that she should dismiss him with a curt and
condescending nod, and when she had swept majestically out of the room,
he made his way humbly across the hall, then by the garden door out
towards the tumble-down barn where he had tethered his old mare.

Master Courage helped him to mount, and he rode away in the direction of
the Dover Road, his head bent, his thoughts dwelling in puzzlement and
wonder on the strange doings of those whom he still reverently called
his betters.




CHAPTER VI

UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE ELMS


Her head full of romantic nonsense! Well! perhaps that was the true
keynote of Sue's character; perhaps, too, it was that same romantic
temperament which gave such peculiar charm to her personality. It was
not mere beauty--of which she had a plentiful share--nor yet altogether
her wealth which attracted so many courtiers to her feet. Men who knew
her in those days at Acol and subsequently at Court said that Lady Sue
was magnetic.

She compelled attention, she commanded admiration, through that very
romanticism of hers which caused her eyes to glow at the recital of
valor, or sorrow, or talent, which caused her to see beauty of thought
and mind and character there where it lay most deeply hidden,
there--sometimes--where it scarce existed.

The dark figure of her guardian's secretary had attracted her attention
from the moment when she first saw him moving silently about the house
and park: the first words she spoke to him were words of sympathy. His
life-story--brief and simple as it had been--had interested her. He
seemed so different from these young and old country squires who
frequented Acol Court. He neither wooed nor flattered her, yet seemed
to find great joy in her company. His voice at times was harsh, his
manner abrupt and even rebellious, but at others it fell to infinite
gentleness when he talked to her of Nature and the stars, both of which
he had studied deeply.

He never spoke of religion. That subject which was on everybody's
tongue, together with the free use of the most sacred names, he
rigorously avoided, also politics, and my Lord Protector's government,
his dictatorship and ever-growing tyranny: but he knew the name of every
flower that grew in meadow or woodland, the note of every bird as it
trilled its song.

There is no doubt that but for the advent of that mysterious personality
into Acol village, the deep friendship which had grown in Sue's heart
for Richard Lambert would have warmed into a more passionate attachment.

But she was too young to reflect, too impulsive to analyze her feelings.
The mystery which surrounded the foreigner who lodged at the Quakeress's
cottage had made strong appeal to her idealism.

His first introduction to her notice, in the woods beyond the park gate
on that cold January evening, with the moon gleaming weirdly through the
branches of the elms, his solitary figure leaning against a tree, had
fired her imagination and set it wildly galloping after mad fantasies.

He had scarcely spoken on that first occasion, but his silence was
strangely impressive. She made up her mind that he was singularly
handsome, although she could not judge of that very clearly for he wore
a heavy mustache, and a shade over one eye; but he was tall, above the
average, and carried the elaborate habiliments which the Cavaliers still
affected, with consummate grace and ease. She thought, too, that the
thick perruque became him very well, and his muffled voice, when he
spoke, sounded singularly sweet.

Since then she had seen him constantly. At rare intervals at first, for
maidenly dignity forbade that she should seem eager to meet him. He was
ignorant of whom she was--oh! of that she felt quite quite sure: she
always wore a dark tippet round her shoulders, and a hood to cover her
head. He seemed pleased to see her, just to hear her voice. Obviously he
was lonely and in deep trouble.

Then one night--it was the first balmy evening after the winter
frosts--the moon was singularly bright, and the hood had fallen back
from her head, just as her face was tilted upwards and her eyes glowing
with enthusiasm. Then she knew that he had learnt to love her, not
through any words which he spoke, for he was silent; his face was in
shadow, and he did not even touch her; therefore it was not through any
of her natural senses that she guessed his love. Yet she knew it, and
her young heart was overfilled with happiness.

That evening when they parted he knelt at her feet and kissed the hem of
her kirtle. After which, when she was back again in her own little room
at Acol Court, she cried for very joy.

They did not meet very often. Once a week at most. He had vaguely
promised to tell her, some day, of his great work for the regeneration
of France, which he was carrying out in loneliness and exile here in
England, a work far greater and more comprehensive than that which had
secured for England religious and political liberty; this work it was
which made him a wanderer on the face of the earth and caused his
frequent and lengthy absences from the cottage in which he lodged.

She was quite content for the moment with these vague promises: in her
heart she was evolving enchanting plans for the future, when she would
be his helpmate in this great and mysterious work.

In the meanwhile she was satisfied to live in the present, to console
and comfort the noble exile, to lavish on him the treasures of her young
and innocent love, to endow him in her imagination with all those mental
and physical attributes which her romantic nature admired most.

The spring had come, clothing the weird branches of the elms with a
tender garb of green, the anemones in the woods yielded to the bluebells
and these to carpets of primroses and violets. The forests of Thanet
echoed with songs of linnets and white-throats. She was happy and she
was in love.

With the lengthened days came some petty sorrows. He was obviously
worried, sometimes even impatient. Their meetings became fewer and
shorter, for the evening hours were brief. She found it difficult to
wander out so late across the park, unperceived, and he would never
meet her by day-light.

This no doubt had caused him to fret. He loved her and desired her all
his own. Yet 'twere useless of a surety to ask Sir Marmaduke's consent
to her marriage with her French prince. He would never give it, and
until she came of age he had absolute power over her choice of a
husband.

She had explained this to him and he had sighed and murmured angry
words, then pressed her with increased passion to his heart.

To-night as she walked through the park, she was conscious--for the
first time perhaps--of a certain alloy mixed with her gladness. Yet she
loved him--oh, yes! just, just as much as ever. The halo of romance with
which she had framed in his mystic personality was in no way dimmed, but
in a sense she almost feared him, for at times his muffled voice sounded
singularly vehement, and his words betrayed the uncontrolled violence of
his nature.

She had hoped to bring him some reassuring news anent Sir Marmaduke de
Chavasse's intentions with regard to herself, but the conversation round
the skittle-alley, her guardian's cruel allusions to "the foreign
adventurer," had shown her how futile were such hopes.

Yet, there were only three months longer of this weary waiting. Surely
he could curb his impatience until she was of age and mistress of her
own hand! Surely he trusted her!

She sighed as this thought crossed her mind, and nearly fell up against
a dark figure which detached itself from among the trees.

"Master Lambert!" she said, uttering a little cry of surprise, pressing
her hand against her heart which was palpitating with emotion. "I had no
thought of meeting you here."

"And I still less of seeing your ladyship," he rejoined coldly.

"How cross you are," she retorted with childish petulance, "what have I
done that you should be so unkind?"

"Unkind?"

"Aye! I had meant to speak to you of this ere now--but you always avoid
me ... you scarce will look at me ... and ... and I wished to ask you if
I had offended you?"

They were standing on a soft carpet of moss, overhead the gentle summer
breeze stirred the great branches of the elms, causing the crisp leaves
to mutter a long-drawn hush-sh-sh in the stillness of the night. From
far away came the appealing call of a blackbird chased by some marauding
owl, while on the ground close by, the creaking of tiny branches
betrayed the quick scurrying of a squirrel. From the remote and infinite
distance came the subdued roar of the sea.

The peace of the woodland, the sighing of the trees, the dark evening
sky above, filled his heart with an aching longing for her.

"Offended me?" he murmured, passing his hand across his forehead, for
his temples throbbed and his eyes were burning. "Nay! why should you
think so?"

"You are so cold, so distant now," she said gently. "We were such good
friends when first I came here. Thanet is a strange country to me. It
seems weird and unkind--the woods are dark and lonely, that persistent
sound of the sea fills me with a strange kind of dread.... My home was
among the Surrey hills you know.... It is far from here.... I cannot
afford to lose a friend...."

She sighed, a quaint, wistful little sigh, curiously out of place, he
thought, in this exquisite mouth framed only for smiles.

"I have so few real friends," she added in a whisper, so low that he
thought she had not spoken, and that the elms had sighed that pathetic
phrase into his ear.

"Believe me, Lady Sue, I am neither cold nor distant," he said, almost
smiling now, for the situation appeared strange indeed, that this
beautiful young girl, rich, courted, surrounded by an army of
sycophants, should be appealing to a poor dependent for friendship. "I
am only a little dazed ... as any man would be who had been dreaming ...
and saw that dream vanish away...."

"Dreaming?"

"Yes!--we all dream sometimes you know ... and a penniless man like
myself, without prospects or friends is, methinks, more prone to it than
most."

"We all have dreams sometimes," she said, speaking very low, whilst her
eyes sought to pierce the darkness beyond the trees. "I too ..."

She paused abruptly, and was quite still for a moment, almost holding
her breath, he thought, as if she were listening. But not a sound came
to disturb the silence of the woods. Blackbird and owl had ceased their
fight for life, the squirrel had gone to rest: the evening air was
filled only by the great murmur of the distant sea.

"Tell me your dream," she said abruptly.

"Alas! it is too foolish! ... too mad! ... too impossible...."

"But you said once that you would be my friend and would try to cheer my
loneliness."

"So I will, with all my heart, an you will permit."

"Yet is there no friendship without confidence," she retorted. "Tell me
your dream."

"What were the use? You would only laugh ... and justly too."

"I should never laugh at that which made you sad," she said gently.

"Sad?" he rejoined with a short laugh, which had something of his usual
bitterness in it. "Sad? Mayhap! Yet I hardly know. Think you that the
poor peasant lad would be sad because he had dreamed that the fairy
princess whom he had seen from afar in her radiance, was sweet and
gracious to him one midsummer's day? It was only a dream, remember: when
he woke she had vanished ... gone out of his sight ... hidden from him
by a barrier of gold.... In front of this barrier stood his pride ...
which perforce would have to be trampled down and crushed ere he could
reach the princess."

She did not reply, only bent her sweet head, lest he should perceive the
tears which had gathered in her eyes. All round them the wood seemed to
have grown darker and more dense, whilst from afar the weird voice of
that distant sea murmured of infinity and of the relentlessness of Fate.

They could not see one another very clearly, yet she knew that he was
gazing at her with an intensity of love and longing in his heart which
caused her own to ache with sympathy; and he knew that she was crying,
that there was something in that seemingly brilliant and happy young
life, which caused the exquisite head to droop as if under a load of
sorrow.

A broken sigh escaped her lips, or was it the sighing of the wind in the
elms?

He was smitten with remorse to think that he should have helped to make
her cry.

"Sue--my little, beautiful Sue," he murmured, himself astonished at his
own temerity in thus daring to address her. It was her grief which had
brought her down to his level: the instinct of chivalry, of protection,
of friendship which had raised him up to hers.

"Will you ever forgive me?" he said, "I had no right to speak to you as
I have done.... And yet ..."

He paused and she repeated his last two words--gently, encouragingly.

"And yet ... good master?"

"Yet at times, when I see the crowd of young, empty-headed
fortune-seeking jackanapes, who dare to aspire to your ladyship's hand
... I have asked myself whether perchance I had the right to remain
silent, whilst they poured their farrago of nonsense into your ear. I
love you, Sue!"

"No! no! good master!" she ejaculated hurriedly, while a nameless,
inexplicable fear seemed suddenly to be holding her in its grip, as he
uttered those few very simple words which told the old, old tale.

But those words once uttered, Richard felt that he could not now draw
back. The jealously-guarded secret had escaped his lips, passion refused
to be held longer in check. A torrent of emotion overmastered him. He
forgot where he was, the darkness of the night, the lateness of the
hour, the melancholy murmur of the wind in the trees, he forgot that she
was rich and he a poor dependent, he only remembered that she was
exquisitely fair and that he--poor fool!--was mad enough to worship her.

It was very dark now, for a bank of clouds hid the glory of the evening
sky, and he could see only the mere outline of the woman whom he so
passionately loved, the small head with the fluttering curls fanned by
the wind, the graceful shoulders and arms folded primly across her
bosom.

He put out his hand and found hers. Oh! the delight of raising it to his
lips.

"By the heaven above us, Sue, by all my hopes of salvation I swear to
you that my love is pure and selfless," he murmured tenderly, all the
while that her fragrant little hand was pressed against his lips. "But
for your fortune, I had come to you long ago and said to you 'Let me
work for you!--My love will help me to carve a fortune for you, which it
shall be my pride to place at your feet.'--Every nameless child, so 'tis
said, may be a king's son ... and I, who have no name that I can of
verity call mine own--no father--no kith or kindred--I would conquer a
kingdom, Sue, if you but loved me too."

His voice broke in a sob. Ashamed of his outburst he tried to hide his
confusion from her, by sinking on one knee on that soft carpet of moss.
From the little village of Acol beyond the wood, came the sound of the
church bell striking the hour of nine. Sue was silent and absorbed,
intensely sorrowful to see the grief of her friend. He was quite lost in
the shadows at her feet now, but she could hear the stern efforts which
he made to resume control over himself and his voice.

"Richard ... good Richard," she said soothingly, "believe me, I am very,
very sorry for this.... I ... I vow I did not know.... I had no
thought--how could I have? that you cared for me like ... like this....
You believe me, good master, do you not?" she entreated. "Say that you
believe me, when I say that I would not willingly have caused you such
grief."

"I believe that you are the most sweet and pure woman in all the
world," he murmured fervently, "and that you are as far beyond my reach
as are the stars."

"Nay, nay, good master, you must not talk like that.... Truly, truly I
am only a weak and foolish girl, and quite unworthy of your deep
devotion ... and you must try ... indeed, indeed you must ... to forget
what happened under these trees to-night."

"Of that I pray you have no fear," he replied more calmly, as he rose
and once more stood before her--a dark figure in the midst of the dark
wood--immovable, almost impassive, with head bent and arms folded across
his chest. "Nathless 'tis foolish for a nameless peasant even to talk of
his honor, yet 'tis mine honor, Lady Sue, which will ever help me to
remember that a mountain of gold and vast estates stand between me and
the realization of my dream."

"No, no," she rejoined earnestly, "it is not that only. You are my
friend, good Richard, and I do not wish to see you eating out your heart
in vain and foolish regrets. What you ... what you wish could
never--never be. Good master, if you were rich to-morrow and I
penniless, I could never be your wife."

"You mean that you could never love me?" he asked.

She was silent. A fierce wave of jealousy--mad, insane, elemental
jealousy seemed suddenly to sweep over him.

"You love someone else?" he demanded brusquely.

"What right have you to ask?"

"The right of a man who would gladly die to see you happy."

He spoke harshly, almost brutally. Jealousy had killed all humility in
him. Love--proud, passionate and defiant--stood up for its just claims,
for its existence, its right to dominate, its desire to conquer.

But even as he thus stood before her, almost frightening her now by the
violence of his speech, by the latent passion in him, which no longer
would bear to be held in check, the bank of clouds which up to now had
obscured the brilliance of the summer sky, finally swept away eastwards,
revealing the luminous firmament and the pale crescent moon which now
glimmered coldly through the branches of the trees.

A muffled sound as of someone treading cautiously the thick bed of moss,
and the creaking of tiny twigs caused Richard Lambert to look up
momentarily from the form of the girl whom he so dearly loved, and to
peer beyond her into the weirdly illumined density of the wood.

Not twenty yards from where they were, a low wall divided the park
itself from the wood beyond, which extended down to Acol village. At an
angle of the wall there was an iron gate, also the tumble-down pavilion,
ivy-grown and desolate, with stone steps leading up to it, through the
cracks of which weeds and moss sprouted up apace.

A man had just emerged from out the thicket and was standing now to the
farther side of the gate looking straight at Lambert and at Sue, who
stood in the full light of the moon. A broad-brimmed hat, such as
cavaliers affected, cast a dark shadow over his face.

It was a mere outline only vaguely defined against the background of
trees, but in that outline Lambert had already recognized the mysterious
stranger who lodged in his brother's cottage down in Acol.

The fixed intensity of the young man's gaze caused Sue to turn and to
look in the same direction. She saw the stranger, who encountering two
pairs of eyes fixed on him, raised his hat with a graceful flourish of
the arm: then, with a short ironical laugh, went his way, and was once
more lost in the gloom.

The girl instinctively made a movement as if to follow him, whilst a
quickly smothered cry--half of joy and half of fear--escaped her lips.
She checked the movement as well as the cry, but not before Richard
Lambert had perceived both.

With the perception came the awful, overwhelming certitude.

"That adventurer!" he exclaimed involuntarily. "Oh my God!"

But she looked him full in the face, and threw back her head with a
gesture of pride and of wrath.

"Master Lambert," she said haughtily, "methinks 'twere needless to
remind you that--since I inadvertently revealed my most cherished secret
to you--it were unworthy a man of honor to betray it to any one."

"My lady ... Sue," he said, feeling half-dazed, bruised and crushed by
the terrible moral blow, which he had just received, "I ... I do not
quite understand. Will you deign to explain?"

"There is naught to explain," she retorted coldly. "Prince Amédé
d'Orléans loves me and I have plighted my troth to him."

"Nay! I entreat your ladyship," he said, feeling--knowing the while, how
useless it was to make an appeal against the infatuation of a hot-headed
and impulsive girl, yet speaking with the courage which ofttimes is born
of despair, "I beg of you, on my knees to listen. This foreign
adventurer ..."

"Silence!" she retorted proudly, and drawing back from him, for of a
truth he had sunk on his knees before her, "an you desire to be my
friend, you must not breathe one word of slander against the man I love.
..."

Then, as he said nothing, realizing, indeed, how futile would be any
effort or word from him, she said, with growing enthusiasm, whilst her
glowing eyes fixed themselves upon the gloom which had enveloped the
mysterious apparition of her lover:

"Prince Amédé d'Orléans is the grandest, most selfless patriot this
world hath ever known. For the sake of France, of tyrannized, oppressed
France, which he adores, he has sacrificed everything! his position, his
home, his wealth and vast estates: he is own kinsman to King Louis, yet
he is exiled from his country whilst a price is set upon his head,
because he cannot be mute whilst he sees tyranny and oppression grind
down the people of France. He could return to Paris to-day a rich and
free man, a prince among his kindred,--if he would but sacrifice that
for which he fights so bravely: the liberty of France!"

"Sue! my adored lady," he entreated, "in the name of Heaven listen to
me.... You do believe, do you not, that I am your friend? ... I would
give my life for you.... I swear to you that you have been deceived and
tricked by this adventurer, who, preying upon your romantic imagination
..."

"Silence, master, an you value my friendship!" she commanded. "I will
not listen to another word. Nay! you should be thankful that I deal not
more harshly with you--that I make allowances for your miserable
jealousy.... Oh! why did you make me say that," she added with one of
those swift changes of mood, which were so characteristic of her, and
with sudden contrition, for an involuntary moan had escaped his lips.
"In the name of Heaven, go--go now I entreat ... leave me to myself ...
lest anger betray me into saying cruel things ... I am safe--quite safe
... I entreat you to let me return to the house alone."

Her voice sounded more and more broken as she spoke: sobs were evidently
rising in her throat. He pulled himself together, feeling that it were
unmanly to worry her now, when emotion was so obviously overmastering
her.

"Forgive me, sweet lady," he said quite gently, as he rose from his
knees. "I said more than I had any right to say. I entreat you to
forgive the poor, presuming peasant who hath dared to raise his eyes to
the fairy princess of his dreams. I pray you to try and forget all that
hath happened to-night beneath the shadows of these elms--and only to
remember one thing: that my life--my lonely, humble, unimportant
life--is yours ... to serve or help you, to worship or comfort you if
need be ... and that there could be no greater happiness for me than to
give it for your sweet sake."

He bowed very low, until his hand could reach the hem of her kirtle,
which he then raised to his lips. She was infinitely sorry for him; all
her anger against him had vanished.

He was very reluctant to go, for this portion of the park was some
distance from the house. But she had commanded and he quite understood
that she wished to be alone: love such as that which he felt for his
sweet lady is ever watchful, yet ever discreet. Was it not natural that
she did not care to look on him after he had angered her so?

She seemed impatient too, and although her feelings towards him had
softened, she repeated somewhat nervously: "I pray you go! Good master,
I would be alone."

Lambert hesitated a while longer, he looked all round him as if
suspicious of any marauders that might be lurking about. The hour was
not very late, and had she not commanded him to go?

Nor would he seem to pry on her movements. Having once made up his mind
to obey, he did so without reserve. Having kissed the hem of her kirtle
he turned towards the house.

He meant to keep on the tiny footpath, which she would be bound to
traverse after him, when she returned. He felt sure that something would
warn him if she really needed his help.

The park and woodland were still: only the mournful hooting of an owl,
the sad sighing of the wind in the old elms broke the peaceful silence
of this summer's night.




CHAPTER VII

THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES


Sue waited--expectant and still--until the last sound of the young man's
footsteps had died away in the direction of the house.

Then with quick impulsive movements she ran to the gate; her hands
sought impatiently in the dark for the primitive catch which held it to.
A large and rusty bolt! she pulled at it--clumsily, for her hands were
trembling. At last the gate flew open; she was out in the woods, peering
into the moonlit thicket, listening for that most welcome sound, the
footsteps of the man she loved.

"My prince!" she exclaimed, for already he was beside her--apparently he
had lain in wait for her, and now held her in his arms.

"My beautiful and gracious lady," he murmured in that curiously muffled
voice of his, which seemed to endow his strange personality with
additional mystery.

"You heard? ... you saw just now? ..." she asked timidly, fearful of
encountering his jealous wrath, that vehement temper of his which she
had learned to dread.

Strangely enough he replied quite gently: "Yes ... I saw ... the young
man loves you, my beautiful Suzanne! ... and he will hate me now ..."

He had always called her Suzanne--and her name thus spoken by him, and
with that quaint foreign intonation of his had always sounded infinitely
sweet.

"But I love you with all my heart," she said earnestly, tenderly, her
whole soul--young, ardent, full of romance, going out to him with all
the strength of its purity and passion. "What matter if all the world
were against you?"

As a rule when they met thus on the confines of the wood, they would
stand together by the gate, forming plans, talking of the future and of
their love. Then after a while they would stroll into the park, he
escorting her, as far as he might approach the house without being seen.

She had no thought that Richard Lambert would be on the watch. Nay! so
wholly absorbed was she in her love for this man, once she was in his
presence, that already--womanlike--she had forgotten the young student's
impassioned avowal, his jealousy, his very existence.

And she loved these evening strolls in the great, peaceful park, at
evening, when the birds were silent in their nests, and the great
shadows of ivy-covered elms enveloped her and her romance. From afar a
tiny light gleamed here and there in some of the windows of Acol Court.

She had hated the grim, bare house at first, so isolated in the midst of
the forests of Thanet, so like the eyrie of a bird of prey.

But now she loved the whole place; the bit of ill-kept tangled garden,
with its untidy lawn and weed-covered beds, in which a few standard
rose-trees strove to find a permanent home; she loved the dark and
mysterious park, the rusty gate, that wood with its rich carpet which
varied as each season came around.

To-night her lover was more gentle than had been his wont of late. They
walked cautiously through the park, for the moon was brilliant and
outlined every object with startling vividness. The trees here were
sparser. Close by was the sunk fence and the tiny rustic bridge--only a
plank or two--which spanned it.

Some thirty yards ahead of them they could see the dark figure of
Richard Lambert walking towards the house.

"One more stroll beneath the trees, _ma mie_," he said lightly, "you'll
not wish to encounter your ardent suitor again."

She loved him in this brighter mood, when he had thrown from him that
mantle of jealousy and mistrust which of late had sat on him so ill.

He seemed to have set himself the task of pleasing her to-night--of
making her forget, mayhap, the wooing of the several suitors who had
hung round her to-day. He talked to her--always in that mysterious,
muffled voice, with the quaint rolling of the r's and the foreign
intonation of the vowels--he talked to her of King Louis and his tyranny
over the people of France: of his own political aims to which he had
already sacrificed fortune, position, home. Of his own brilliant past at
the most luxurious court the world had ever known. He fired her
enthusiasm, delighted her imagination, enchained her soul to his: she
was literally swept off the prosy face of this earth and whirled into a
realm of romance, enchanting, intoxicating, mystic--almost divine.

She forgot fleeting time, and did not even hear the church bell over at
Acol village striking the hour of ten.

He had to bring her back to earth, and to guide her reluctant footsteps
again towards the house. But she was too happy to part from him so
easily. She forced him to escort her over the little bridge, under the
pretense of terror at the lateness of the hour. She vowed that he could
not be perceived from the house, since all the lights were out, and
everyone indeed must be abed. Her guardian's windows, moreover, gave on
the other side of the house; and he of a surety would not be moon or
star gazing at this hour of the night.

Her mood was somewhat reckless. The talk with which he had filled her
ears had gone to her brain like wine. She felt intoxicated with the
atmosphere of mystery, of selfless patriotism, of great and fallen
fortunes, with which he knew so well how to surround himself. Mayhap,
that in her innermost heart now there was a scarce conscious desire to
precipitate a crisis, to challenge discovery, to step boldly before her
guardian, avowing her love, demanding the right to satisfy it.

She refused to bid him adieu save at the garden door. Three steps led
up straight into the dining-room from the flagged pathway which skirted
the house. She ran up these steps, silently and swiftly as a little
mouse, and then turned her proud and happy face to him.

"Good-night, sweet prince," she whispered, extending her delicate hand
to him.

She stood in the full light of the moon dominating him from the top of
the steps, an exquisite vision of youth and beauty and romance.

He took off his broad-brimmed hat, but his face was still in shadow, for
the heavy perruque fell in thick dark curls covering both his cheeks. He
bent very low and kissed the tips of her fingers.

"When shall we meet again, my prince?" she asked.

"This day week, an it please you, my queen," he murmured.

And then he turned to go. She meant to stand there and watch him cross
the tangled lawn, and the little bridge, and to see him lose himself
amidst the great shadows of the park.

But he had scarce gone a couple of steps when a voice, issuing from the
doorway close behind her, caused her to turn in quick alarm.

"Sue! in the name of Heaven! what doth your ladyship here and at this
hour?"

The crisis which the young girl had almost challenged, had indeed
arrived. Mistress de Chavasse--carrying a lighted and guttering candle,
was standing close behind her. At the sound of her voice and Sue's
little cry of astonishment rather than fear, Prince Amédé d'Orléans too,
had paused, with a muttered curse on his lips, his foot angrily tapping
the flagstones.

But it were unworthy a gallant gentleman of the most chivalrous Court in
the world to beat a retreat when his mistress was in danger of an
unpleasant quarter of an hour.

Sue was more than a little inclined to be defiant.

"Mistress de Chavasse," she said quietly, "will you be good enough to
explain by what right you have spied on me to-night? Hath my guardian
perchance set you to dog my footsteps?"

"There was no thought in my mind of spying on your ladyship," rejoined
Mistress de Chavasse coldly. "I was troubled in my sleep and came
downstairs because I heard a noise, and feared those midnight marauders
of which we have heard so much of late. I myself had locked this door,
and was surprised to find it unlatched. I opened it and saw you standing
there."

"Then we'll all to bed, fair mistress," rejoined Sue gayly. She was too
happy, too sure of herself and of her lover to view this sudden
discovery of her secret with either annoyance or alarm. She would be
free in three months, and he would be faithful to her. Love proverbially
laughs at bars and bolts, and even if her stern guardian, apprised of
her evening wanderings, prevented her from seeing her prince for the
next three months, pshaw! a hundred days at most, and nothing could keep
her from his side.

"Good-night, fair prince," she repeated tenderly, extending her hand
towards her lover once more, while throwing a look of proud defiance to
Mistress de Chavasse. He could not help but return to the foot of the
steps; any pusillanimity on his part at this juncture, any reluctance to
meet Editha face to face or to bear the brunt of her reproaches and of
her sneers, might jeopardize the romance of his personality in the eyes
of Sue. Therefore he boldly took her hand and kissed it with mute
fervor.

She gave a happy little laugh and added pertly:

"Good-night, mistress ... I'll leave you to make your own adieux to
Monseigneur le Prince d'Orléans. I'll warrant that you and he--despite
the lateness of the hour--will have much to say to one another."

And without waiting to watch the issue of her suggestion, her eyes
dancing with mischief, she turned and ran singing and laughing into the
house.




CHAPTER VIII

PRINCE AMÉDÉ D'ORLÉANS


At first it seemed as if the stranger meant to beat a precipitate and
none too dignified retreat now that the adoring eyes of Lady Sue were no
longer upon him. But Mistress de Chavasse had no intention of allowing
him to extricate himself quite so easily from an unpleasant position.

"One moment, master," she said loudly and peremptorily. "Prince or
whatever you may wish to call yourself ... ere you show me a clean pair
of heels, I pray you to explain your presence here on Sir Marmaduke's
doorstep at ten o'clock at night, and in company with his ward."

For a moment--a second or two only--the stranger appeared to hesitate.
He paused with one foot still on the lowest of the stone steps, the
other on the flagged path, his head bent, his hand upraised in the act
of re-adjusting his broad-brimmed hat.

Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him, he threw back his head, gave
a short laugh as if he were pleased with this new thought, then turned,
meeting Mistress de Chavasse's stern gaze squarely and fully. He threw
his hat down upon the steps and crossed his arms over his chest.

"One moment, mistress?" he said with an ironical bow. "I do not need
one moment. I have already explained."

"Explained? how?" she retorted, "nay! I'll not be trifled with, master,
and methinks you will find that Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse will expect
some explanation--which will prove unpleasant to yourself--for your
unwarrantable impudence in daring to approach his ward."

He put up his hand in gentle deprecation.

"Impudence? Oh, mistress?" he said reproachfully.

"Let me assure you, master," she continued with relentless severity,
"that you were wise an you returned straightway to your lodgings now ...
packed your worldly goods and betook yourself and them to anywhere you
please."

"Ah!" he sighed gently, "that is impossible."

"You would dare? ..." she retorted.

"I would dare remain there, where my humble presence is most
desired--beside the gracious lady who honors me with her love."

"You are insolent, master ... and Sir Marmaduke ..."

"Oh!" he rejoined lightly, "Sir Marmaduke doth not object."

"There, I fear me, you are in error, master! and in his name I now
forbid you ever to attempt to speak to Lady Susannah Aldmarshe again."

This command, accompanied by a look of withering scorn, seemed to afford
the stranger vast entertainment. He made the wrathful lady a low,
ironical bow, and clapped his hands together laughing and exclaiming:

"Brava! brava! of a truth but this is excellent! Pray, mistress, will
you deign to tell me if in this your bidding you have asked Sir
Marmaduke for his opinion?"

"I need not to ask him. I ask you to go."

"Go? Whither?" he asked blandly.

"Out of my sight and off these grounds at once, ere I rouse the servants
and have you whipped off like a dog!" she said, angered beyond measure
at his audacity, his irony, his manner, suggestive of insolent triumph.
His muffled voice with its curious foreign accent irritated her, as did
the shadow of his perruque over his brow, and the black silk shade which
he wore over one eye.

Even now in response to her violent outburst he broke into renewed
laughter.

"Better and better! Ah, mistress," he said with a shake of the head, "of
a truth you are more blind than I thought."

"You are more insolent, master, than I had thought possible."

"Yet meseems, fair lady, that in the lonely and mysterious stranger you
might have remembered your humble and devoted servant," he said, drawing
his figure up towards her.

"You! an old friend!" she said contemptuously. "I have ne'er set eyes on
you in my life before."

"To think that the moon should be so treacherous," he rejoined
imperturbably. "Will you not look a little closer, fair mistress, the
shadows are somewhat dark, mayhap."

She felt his one eye fixed upon her with cold intentness, a strange
feeling of superstitious dread suddenly crept over her from head to
foot. Like a bird fascinated by a snake she came a little nearer, down
the steps, towards him, her eyes, too, riveted on his face, that curious
face of his, surrounded by the heavy perruque hiding ears and cheeks,
the mouth overshadowed by the dark mustache, one eye concealed beneath
the black silk shade.

He seemed amused at her terror and as she came nearer to him, he too,
advanced a little until their eyes met--his, mocking, amused, restless;
hers, intent and searching.

Thus they gazed at one another for a few seconds, whilst silence reigned
around and the moon peered down cold and chaste from above, illumining
the old house, the neglected garden, the vast park with its innumerable
dark secrets and the mysteries which it hid.

She was the first to step back, to recoil before the ironical intensity
of that fixed gaze. She felt as if she were in a dream, as if a
nightmare assailed her, which in her wakeful hours would be dissipated
by reason, by common sense, by sound and sober fact.

She even passed her hand across her eyes as if to sweep away from before
her vision, a certain image which fancy had conjured up.

His laugh--strident and mocking--roused her from this dreamlike state.

"I ... I ... do not understand," she murmured.

"Yet it is so simple," he replied, "did you not ask me awhile ago if
nothing could be done?"

"Who ... who are you?" she whispered, and then repeated once again: "Who
are you?"

"I am His Royal Highness, Prince Amédé d'Orléans," said Sir Marmaduke de
Chavasse lightly, "the kinsman of His Majesty, King Louis of France, the
mysterious foreigner who works for the religious and political freedom
of his country, and on whose head _le roi soleil_ hath set a price ...
and who, moreover, hath enflamed the romantic imagination of a beautiful
young girl, thus winning her ardent love in the present and in the near
future together with her vast fortune and estates."

He made a movement as if to remove his perruque but she stopped him with
a gesture. She had understood. And in the brilliant moonlight a complete
revelation of his personality might prove dangerous. Lady Sue herself
might still--for aught they knew--be standing in the dark room
behind--unseen yet on the watch.

He seemed vastly amused at her terror, and boldly took the hand with
which she had arrested his act of total revelation.

"Nay! do you recognize your humble servant at last, fair Editha?" he
queried. "On my honor, madam, Lady Sue is deeply enamored of me. What
think you of my chances now?"

"You? You?" she repeated at intervals, mechanically, dazed still, lost
in a whirl of conflicting emotions wherein fear, amazement, and a
certain vein of superstitious horror fought a hard battle in her dizzy
brain.

"The risks," she murmured more coherently.

"Bah!"

"If she discover you, before ... before ..."

"Before she is legally my wife? Pshaw! ... Then of a truth my scheme
will come to naught ... But will you not own, Editha, that 'tis worth
the risk?"

"Afterwards?" she asked, "afterwards?"

"Afterwards, mistress," he rejoined enigmatically, "afterwards sits on
the knees of the gods."

And with a flourish of his broad-brimmed hat he turned on his heel and
anon was lost in the shadows of the tall yew hedge.

How long she stood there watching that spot whereon he had been
standing, she could not say. Presently she shivered; the night had
turned cold. She heard the cry of some small bird attacked by a midnight
prowler; was it the sparrow-hawk after its prey?

From the other side of the house came the sound of slow and firm
footsteps, then the opening and shutting of a door.

Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse had played his part for to-night: silently as
he had gone, so he returned to his room, whilst in another corner of the
sparrow-hawk's nest a young girl slept, dreaming dreams of patriots and
heroes, of causes nobly won, of poverty and obscurity gloriously
endured.

Mistress de Chavasse with a sigh half of regret, half of indifference,
finally turned her back on the moonlit garden and went within.




CHAPTER IX

SECRET SERVICE


Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy was excessively perturbed. Matters at the
Court were taking a curious turn. That something of unusual moment had
happened within the last few days he was thoroughly convinced, and still
having it in his mind that he was especially qualified for the lucrative
appointments in my Lord Protector's secret service--he thought this an
excellent opportunity for perfecting himself in the art of
investigation, shrewdly conducted, which he understood to be most
essential for the due fulfillment of such appointments.

Thus we see him some few days later on a late afternoon, with back bent
nearly double, eyes fixed steadily on the ground and his face a perfect
mirror of thoughtful concentration within, slowly walking along the tiny
footpath which wound in and out the groups of majestic elms in the park.

Musing and meditating, at times uttering strange and enigmatical
exclamations, he reached the confines of the private grounds, the spot
where the surrounding wall gave place to a low iron gate, where the
disused pavilion stood out gray and forlorn-looking in the midst of the
soft green of the trees, and where through the woods beyond the gate,
could just be perceived the tiny light which issued from the
blacksmith's cottage, the most outlying one in the village of Acol.

Master Hymn-of-Praise leaned thoughtfully against the ivy-covered wall.
His eyes, roaming, searching, restless, pried all around him.

"Footprints!" he mused, "footprints which of a surety must mean that
human foot hath lately trod this moss. Footprints moreover, which lead
up the steps to the door of that pavilion, wherein to my certain
knowledge, no one hath had access of late."

Something, of course, was going on at Acol Court, that strange and
inexplicable something which he had tried to convey by covert suggestion
to Mistress Charity's female--therefore inferior--brain.

Sir Marmaduke's temper was more sour and ill even than of yore, and
there was still an unpleasant sensation in the lumbar regions of Master
Busy's spine, whenever he sat down, which recalled a somewhat vigorous
outburst of his master's ill-humor.

Mistress de Chavasse went about the house like a country wench
frightened by a ghost, and Mistress Charity averred that she seldom went
to bed now before midnight. Certain it is that Master Busy himself had
met the lady wandering about the house candle in hand at an hour when
all respectable folk should be abed, and when she almost fell up against
Hymn-of-Praise in the dark she gave a frightened scream as if she had
suddenly come face to face with the devil.

Then there was her young ladyship.

She was neither ill-tempered nor yet under the ban of fear, but Master
Busy vowed unto himself that she was suffering from ill-concealed
melancholy, from some hidden secret or wild romance. She seldom laughed,
she had spoken with discourtesy and impatience to Squire Pyncheon, who
rode over the other day on purpose to bring her a bunch of sweet
marjoram which grew in great profusion in his mother's garden: she
markedly avoided the company of her guardian, and wandered about the
park alone, at all hours of the day--a proceeding which in a young lady
of her rank was quite unseemly.

All these facts neatly docketed in Master Busy's orderly brain,
disturbed him not a little. He had not yet made up his mind as to the
nature of the mystery which was surrounding the Court and its inmates,
but vaguely he thought of abductions and elopements, which the presence
of the richest heiress in the South of England in the house of the
poorest squire in the whole country, more than foreshadowed.

This lonely, somewhat eerie corner of the park appeared to be the center
around which all the mysterious happenings revolved, and Master
Hymn-of-Praise had found his way hither on this fine July afternoon,
because he had distinct hopes of finding out something definite, certain
facts which he then could place before Squire Boatfield who was
major-general of the district, and who would then, doubtless, commend
him for his ability and shrewdness in forestalling what might prove to
be a terrible crime.

The days were getting shorter now; it was little more than eight
o'clock and already the shades of evening were drawing closely in: the
last rays of the setting sun had long disappeared in a glowing haze of
gold, and the fantastic branches of the old elms, intertwined with the
parasitic ivy looked grim and threatening, silhouetted against the lurid
after glow. Master Busy liked neither the solitude, nor yet the silence
of the woods; he had just caught sight of a bat circling over the
dilapidated roof of the pavilion, and he hated bats. Though he belonged
to a community which denied the angels and ignored the saints, he had a
firm belief in the existence of a tangible devil, and somehow he could
not dissociate his ideas of hell and of evil spirits from those which
related to the mysterious flutterings of bats.

Moreover he thought that his duties in connection with the science of
secret investigation, had been sufficiently fulfilled for the day, and
he prepared to wend his way back to the house, when the sound of voices,
once more aroused his somnolent attention.

"Someone," he murmured within himself, "the heiress and the abductor
mayhap."

This might prove the opportunity of his life, the chance which would
place him within the immediate notice of the major-general, perhaps of
His Highness the Protector himself. He felt that to vacate his post of
observation at this moment would be unworthy the moral discipline which
an incipient servant of the Commonwealth should impose upon himself.

Striving to smother a sense of terror, or to disguise it even to
himself under the mask of officiousness, he looked about for a
hiding-place--a post of observation as he called it.

A tree with invitingly forked branches seemed to be peculiarly adapted
to his needs. Hymn-of-Praise was neither very young nor very agile, but
dreams of coming notoriety lent nimbleness to his limbs.

By the time that the voices drew nearer, the sober butler of Acol Court
was installed astride an elm bough, hidden by the dense foliage and by
the leaf-laden strands of ivy, enfolded by the fast gathering shadows of
evening, supremely uncomfortable physically, none too secure on his
perch, yet proud and satisfied in the consciousness of fulfilled duty.

The next moment he caught sight of Mistress Charity--Mistress Charity so
please you, who had plighted her troth to him, walking arm in arm with
Master Courage Toogood, as impudent, insolent and debauched a young
jackanapes as ever defaced the forests of Thanet.

"Mistress, fair mistress," he was sighing, and murmuring in her ear,
"the most beautiful and gracious thing on God's earth, when I hold you
pressed thus against my beating heart ..."

Apparently his feelings were too deep to be expressed in the words of
his own vocabulary, for he paused a while, sighed audibly, and then
asked anxiously:

"You do hear my heart beating, mistress, do you not?"

She blushed, for she was naught but a female baggage, and though Master
Busy's impassioned protestations of less than half an hour ago, must be
still ringing in her ears, she declared emphatically that she could hear
the throbbing of that young vermin's heart.

Master Busy up aloft was quite sure that what she heard was a few sheep
and cattle of Sir Marmaduke's who were out to grass in a field close by,
and had been scared into a canter.

What went on for the next moment or two the saintly man on the elm tree
branch could not rightly perceive, but the next words from Mistress
Charity's lips sent a thrill of indignation through his heart.

"Oh! Master Courage," she said with a little cry, "you must not squeeze
me so! I vow you have taken the breath out of my body! The Lord love
you, child! think you I can stay here all this while and listen to your
nonsense?"

"Just one minute longer, fair mistress," entreated the young reprobate,
"the moon is not yet up, the birds have gone to their nests for sleep,
will ye not tarry a while here with me? That old fool Busy will never
know!"

It is a fact that at this juncture the saintly man well-nigh fell off
his perch, and when Master Courage, amidst many coy shrieks from the
fickle female, managed to drag her down beside him, upon the carpet of
moss immediately beneath the very tree whereon Hymn-of-Praise was
holding watch, the unfortunate man had need of all his strength of mind
and of purpose not to jump down with both feet upon the lying face of
that young limb of Satan.

But he felt that the discovery of his somewhat undignified position by
these two evil-doers would not at this moment be quite opportune, so he
endeavored to maintain his equilibrium at the cost of supreme
discomfort, and the loud cracking of the branch on which he was perched.

Mistress Charity gave a cry of terror.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing, mistress, I swear," rejoined Courage reassuringly,
"there are always noises in old elm trees, the ivy hangs heavy and ..."

"I have heard it said of late that the pavilion is haunted," she
murmured under her breath.

"No! not haunted, mistress! I vow 'tis but the crackling of loose
branches, and there is that which I would whisper in your ear ..."

But before Master Courage had the time to indulge in this, the desire of
his heart, something fell upon the top of his lean head which certainly
never grew on the elm tree overhead. Having struck his lanky hair the
object fell straight into his lap.

It was a button. An ordinary, brown, innocent enough looking button. But
still a button. Master Courage took it in his hand and examined it
carefully, turning it over once or twice. The little thing certainly
wore a familiar air. Master Courage of a truth had seen such an one
before.

"That thing never grew up there, master," said Mistress Charity in an
agitated whisper.

"No!" he rejoined emphatically, "nor yet doth a button form part of the
habiliments of a ghost."

But not a sound came from above: and though Courage and Charity peered
upwards with ever-increasing anxiety, the fast gathering darkness
effectually hid the mystery which lurked within that elm.

"I vow that there's something up there, mistress," said the youth with
sudden determination.

"Could it be bats, master?" she queried with a shudder.

"Nay! but bats do not wear buttons," he replied sententiously. "Yet of a
surety, I mean to make an investigation of the affair as that old fool
Hymn-of-Praise would say."

Whereupon, heedless of Mistress Charity's ever-growing agitation, he ran
towards the boundary wall of the park, and vaulted the low gate with an
agile jump even as she uttered a pathetic appeal to him not to leave her
alone in the dark.

Fear had rooted the girl to the spot. She dared not move away, fearful
lest her running might entice that mysterious owner of the brown button
to hurry in her track. Yet she would have loved to follow Master
Courage, and to put at least a gate and wall between herself and those
terrible elms.

She was just contemplating a comprehensive and vigorous attack of
hysterics when she heard Master Courage's voice from the other side of
the gate.

"Hist! Hist, mistress! Quick!"

She gathered up what shreds of valor she possessed and ran blindly in
the direction whence came the welcome voice.

"I pray you take this," said the youth, who was holding a wooden bucket
out over the gate, "whilst I climb back to you."

"But what is it, master?" she asked, as--obeying him mechanically--she
took the bucket from him. It was heavy, for it was filled almost to the
brim with a liquid which seemed very evil-smelling.

The next moment Master Courage was standing beside her. He took the
bucket from her and then walked as rapidly as he could with it back
towards the elm tree.

"It will help me to dislodge the bats, mistress," he said enigmatically,
speaking over his shoulder as he walked.

She followed him--excited but timorous--until together they once more
reached the spot, where Master Courage's amorous declarations had been
so rudely interrupted. He put the bucket down beside him, and rubbed his
hands together whilst uttering certain sounds which betrayed his glee.

Then only did she notice that he was carrying under one arm a long
curious-looking instrument--round and made of tin, with a handle at one
end.

She looked curiously into the bucket and at the instrument.

"'Tis the tar-water used for syringing the cattle," she whispered, "ye
must not touch it, master. Where did you find it?"

"Just by the wall," he rejoined. "I knew it was kept there. They wash
the sheep with it to destroy the vermin in them. This is the squirt for
it," he added calmly, placing the end of the instrument in the liquid,
"and I will mayhap destroy the vermin which is lodged in that elm tree."

A cry of terror issuing from above froze the very blood in Mistress
Charity's veins.

"Stop! stop! you young limb of Satan!" came from Master Busy's nearly
choking throat.

"It's evildoers or evil spirits, master," cried Mistress Charity in an
agony of fear.

"Whatever it be, mistress, this should destroy it!" said Master Courage
philosophically, as turning the syringe upwards he squirted the whole of
its contents straight into the fork of the ivy-covered branches.

There was a cry of rage, followed by a cry of terror, then Master
Hymn-of-Praise Busy with a terrific clatter of breaking boughs, fell in
a heap upon the soft carpet of moss.

Master Courage be it said to the eternal shame of venturesome youth,
took incontinently to his heels, leaving Mistress Charity to bear the
brunt of the irate saintly man's wrath.

Master Busy, we must admit had but little saintliness left in him now.
Let us assume that--as he explained afterwards--he was not immediately
aware of Mistress Charity's presence, and that his own sense of
propriety and of decorum had been drowned in a cataract of tar water.
Certain it is that a volley of oaths, which would have surprised Sir
Marmaduke himself, escaped his lips.

Had he not every excuse? He was dripping from head to foot, spluttering,
blinded, choked and bruised.

He shook himself like a wet spaniel. Then hearing the sound of a
smothered exclamation which did not seem altogether unlike a giggle, he
turned round savagely and perceived the dim outline of Mistress
Charity's dainty figure.

"The Lord love thee, Master Hymn-of-Praise," she began, somewhat
nervously, "but you have made yourself look a sight."

"And by G--d I'll make that young jackanapes look a sight ere I take my
hand off him," he retorted savagely.

"But what were you ... hem! what wert thou doing up in the elm tree,
friend Hymn-of-Praise?" she asked demurely.

"Thee me no thou!" he said with enigmatic pompousness, followed by a
distinctly vicious snarl, "Master Busy will be my name in future for a
saucy wench like thee."

He turned towards the house. Mistress Charity following meekly--somewhat
subdued, for Master Busy was her affianced husband, and she had no mind
to mar her future, through any of young Courage's dare-devil escapades.

"Thou wouldst wish to know what I was doing up in that forked tree?" he
asked her with calm dignity after a while, when the hedges of the flower
garden came in sight. "I was making a home for thee, according to the
commands of the Lord."

"Not in the elm trees of a surety, Master Busy?"

"I was making a home for thee," he repeated without heeding her flippant
observation, "by rendering myself illustrious. I told thee, wench, did I
not? that something was happening within the precincts of Acol Court,
and that it is my duty to lie in wait and to watch. The heiress is about
to be abducted, and it is my task to frustrate the evil designs of the
mysterious criminal."

She looked at him in speechless amazement. He certainly looked strangely
weird in the semi-darkness with his lanky hair plastered against his
cheeks, his collar half torn from round his neck, the dripping, oily
substance flowing in rivulets from his garments down upon the ground.

The girl had no longer any desire to laugh, and when Master Busy strode
majestically across the rustic bridge, then over the garden paths to the
kitchen quarter of the house, she followed him without a word, awed by
his extraordinary utterances, vaguely feeling that in his dripping
garments he somehow reminded her of Jonah and the whale.




CHAPTER X

AVOWED ENMITY


The pavilion had been built some fifty years ago, by one of the Spantons
of Acol who had a taste for fanciful architecture.

It had been proudly held by several deceased representatives of the
family to be the reproduction of a Greek temple. It certainly had
columns supporting the portico, and steps leading thence to the ground.
It was also circular in shape and was innocent of windows, deriving its
sole light from the door, when it was open.

The late Sir Jeremy, I believe, had been very fond of the place. Being
of a somewhat morose and taciturn disposition, he liked the seclusion of
this lonely corner of the park. He had a chair or two put into the
pavilion and 'twas said that he indulged there in the smoking of that
fragrant weed which of late had been more generously imported into this
country.

After Sir Jeremy's death, the pavilion fell into disuse. Sir Marmaduke
openly expressed his dislike of the forlorn hole, as he was wont to call
it. He caused the door to be locked, and since then no one had entered
the little building. The key, it was presumed, had been lost; the lock
certainly looked rusty. The roof, too, soon fell into disrepair, and no
doubt within, the place soon became the prey of damp and mildew, the
nest of homing birds, or the lair of timid beasts. Very soon the proud
copy of an archaic temple took on that miserable and forlorn look
peculiar to uninhabited spots.

From an air of abandonment to that of eeriness was but a step, and now
the building towered in splendid isolation, in this remote corner of the
park, at the confines of the wood, with a reputation for being the abode
of ghosts, of bats and witches, and other evil things.

When Master Busy sought for tracks of imaginary criminals bent on
abducting the heiress he naturally drifted to this lonely spot; when
Master Courage was bent on whispering sweet nothings into the ear of the
other man's betrothed, he enticed her to that corner of the park where
he was least like to meet the heavy-booted saint.

Thus it was that these three met on the one spot where as a rule at a
late hour of the evening Prince Amédé d'Orléans was wont to commence his
wanderings, sure of being undisturbed, and with the final disappearance
of Master Busy and Mistress Charity the place was once more deserted.

The bats once more found delight in this loneliness and from all around
came that subdued murmur, that creaking of twigs, that silence so full
of subtle sounds, which betrays the presence of animal life on the
prowl.

Anon there came the harsh noise of a key grating in a rusty lock. The
door of the pavilion was cautiously opened from within and the
mysterious French prince, bewigged, booted and hatted, emerged into the
open. The night had drawn a singularly dark mantle over the woods. Banks
of cloud obscured the sky; the tall elm trees with their ivy-covered
branches, and their impenetrable shadows beneath, formed a dense wall
which the sight of human creatures was not keen enough to pierce. Sir
Marmaduke de Chavasse, in spite of this darkness, which he hailed
gleefully, peered cautiously and intently round as he descended the
steps.

He had not met Lady Sue in the capacity of her romantic lover since that
evening a week ago, when his secret had been discovered by Mistress de
Chavasse. The last vision he had had of the young girl was one redolent
of joy and love and trust, sufficient to reassure him that all was well
with her, in regard to his schemes; but on that same evening a week ago
he had gazed upon another little scene, which had not filled him with
either joy or security.

He had seen Lady Sue standing beside a young man whose personality--to
say the least--was well-nigh as romantic as that of the exiled scion of
the house of Orléans. He had seen rather than heard a young and
passionate nature pouring into girlish ears the avowal of an unselfish
and ardent love which had the infinite merit of being real and true.

However well he himself might play his part of selfless hero and of
vehement lover, there always lurked the danger that the falseness of his
protestations would suddenly ring a warning note to the subtle sense of
the confiding girl. Were it not for the intense romanticism of her
disposition, which beautified and exalted everything with which it came
in contact, she would of a surety have detected the lie ere this. He had
acted his dual rôle with consummate skill, the contrast between the
surly Puritanical guardian, with his round cropped head and shaven face,
and the elegantly dressed cavalier, with a heavy mustache, an enormous
perruque and a shade over one eye, was so complete that even Mistress de
Chavasse--alert, suspicious, wholly unromantic, had been momentarily
deceived, and would have remained so but for his voluntary revelation of
himself.

But the watchful and disappointed young lover was the real danger: a
danger complicated by the fact that the Prince Amédé d'Orléans actually
dwelt in the cottage owned by Lambert's brother, the blacksmith. The
mysterious prince had perforce to dwell somewhere; else, whenever spied
by a laborer or wench from the village, he would have excited still
further comment, and his movements mayhap would have been more
persistently dogged.

For this reason Sir Marmaduke had originally chosen Adam Lambert's
cottage to be his headquarters; it stood on the very outskirts of the
village and as he had only the wood to traverse between it and the
pavilion where he effected his change of personality, he ran thus but
few risks of meeting prying eyes. Moreover, Adam Lambert, the
blacksmith, and the old woman who kept house for him, both belonged to
the new religious sect which Judge Bennett had so pertinently dubbed the
Quakers, and they kept themselves very much aloof from gossip and the
rest of the village.

True, Richard Lambert oft visited his brother and the old woman, but did
so always in the daytime when Prince Amédé d'Orléans carefully kept out
of the way. Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse had all the true instincts of the
beast or bird of prey. He prowled about in the dark, and laid his snares
for the seizure of his victim under cover of the night.

This evening certain new schemes had found birth in his active mind; he
was impatient that the victim tarried, when his brain was alive with
thoughts of how to effect a more speedy capture. He leaned against the
wall, close by the gate as was his wont when awaiting Sue, smiling
grimly to himself at thought of the many little subterfuges she would
employ to steal out of the house, without encountering--as she
thought--her watchful guardian.

A voice close behind him--speaking none too kindly--broke in on his
meditations, causing him to start--almost to crouch like a frightened
cat.

The next moment he had recognized the gruff and nasal tones of Adam
Lambert. Apparently the blacksmith had just come from the wood through
the gate, and had almost stumbled in the dark against the rigid figure
of his mysterious lodger.

"Friend, what dost thou here?" he asked peremptorily. But already Sir
Marmaduke had recovered from that sudden sense of fear which had caused
him to start in alarm.

"I would ask the same question of you, my friend," he retorted airily,
speaking in the muffled voice and with the markedly foreign accent which
he had assumed for the rôle of the Prince, "might I inquire what you are
doing here?"

"I have to see a sick mare down Minster way," replied Lambert curtly,
"this is a short cut thither, and Sir Marmaduke hath granted me leave.
But he liketh not strangers loitering in his park."

"Then, friend," rejoined the other lightly, "when Sir Marmaduke doth
object to my strolling in his garden, he will doubtless apprise me of
the fact, without interference from you."

Adam Lambert, after his uncivil greeting of his lodger, had already
turned his back on him, loath to have further speech with a man whom he
hated and despised.

Like the majority of country folk these days, the blacksmith had a
wholesale contempt for every foreigner, and more particularly for those
who hailed from France: that country--in the estimation of all Puritans,
Dissenters and Republicans--being the happy abode of every kind of
immorality and debauchery.

Prince Amédé d'Orléans--as he styled himself--with his fantastic
clothes, his airs and graces and long, curly hair was an object of
special aversion to the Quaker, even though the money which the
despised foreigner paid for his lodgings was passing welcome these hard
times.

Adam resolutely avoided speech with the Prince, whenever possible, but
the latter's provocative and sarcastic speech roused his dormant hatred;
like a dog who has been worried, he now turned abruptly round and faced
Sir Marmaduke, stepping close up to him, his eyes glaring with
vindictive rage, a savage snarl rising in his throat.

"Take notice, friend," he said hoarsely, "that I'll not bear thine
impudence. Thou mayest go and bully the old woman at the cottage when I
am absent--Oh! I've heard thee!" he added with unbridled savagery,
"ordering her about as if she were thy serving wench ... but let me tell
thee that she is no servant of thine, nor I ... so have done, my fine
prince ... dost understand?"

"Prithee, friend, do not excite yourself," said Sir Marmaduke blandly,
drawing back against the wall as far as he could to avoid close
proximity with his antagonist. "I have never wished to imply that
Mistress Lambert was aught but my most obliging, most amiable
landlady--nor have I, to my certain knowledge, overstepped the
privileges of a lodger. I trust that your worthy aunt hath no cause for
complaint. Mistress Lambert is your aunt?" he added superciliously, "is
she not?"

"That is nothing to thee," muttered the other, "if she be my aunt or no,
as far as I can see."

"Surely not. I asked in a spirit of polite inquiry."

But apparently this subject was one which had more than any other the
power to rouse the blacksmith's savage temper. He fought with it for a
moment or two, for anger is the Lord's, and strict Quaker discipline
forbade such unseemly wrangling. But Adam was a man of violent
temperament which his strict religious training had not altogether
succeeded in holding in check: the sneers of the foreign prince, his
calm, supercilious attitude, broke the curb which religion had set upon
his passion.

"Aye! thou art mighty polite to me, my fine gentleman," he said
vehemently. "Thou knowest what I think of thy lazy foreign ways ... why
dost thou not do a bit of honest work, instead of hanging round her
ladyship's skirts? ... If I were to say a word to Sir Marmaduke, 'twould
be mightily unpleasant for thee, an I mistake not. Oh! I know what
thou'rt after, with thy fine ways, and thy romantic, lying talk of
liberty and patriotism! ... the heiress, eh, friend? That is thy
design.... I am not blind, I tell thee.... I have seen thee and her ..."

Sir Marmaduke laughed lightly, shrugging his shoulders in token of
indifference.

"Quite so, quite so, good master," he said suavely, "do ye not waste
your breath in speaking thus loudly. I understand that your sentiments
towards me do not partake of that Christian charity of which ye and
yours do prate at times so loudly. But I'll not detain you. Doubtless
worthy Mistress Lambert will be awaiting you, or is it the sick mare
down Minster way that hath first claim on your amiability? I'll not
detain you."

He turned as if to go, but Adam's hard grip was on his shoulder in an
instant.

"Nay! thou'lt not detain me--'tis I am detaining thee!" said the
blacksmith hoarsely, "for I desired to tell thee that thy ugly French
face is abhorrent to me ... I do not hold with princes.... For a prince
is none better than another man nay, he is worse an he loafs and steals
after heiresses and their gold ... and will not do a bit of honest
work.... Work makes the man.... Work and prayer ... not your titles and
fine estates. This is a republic now ... understand? ... no king, no
House of Lords--please the Lord neither clergymen nor noblemen soon....
I work with my hands ... and am not ashamed. The Lord Saviour was a
carpenter and not a prince.... My brother is a student and a
gentleman--as good as any prince--understand? Ten thousand times as good
as thee."

He relaxed his grip which had been hard as steel on Sir Marmaduke's
shoulder. It was evident that he had been nursing hatred and loathing
against his lodger for some time, and that to-night the floodgates of
his pent-up wrath had been burst asunder through the mysterious prince's
taunts, and insinuations anent the cloud and secrecy which hung round
the Lamberts' parentage.

Though his shoulder was painful and bruised under the pressure of the
blacksmith's rough fingers, Sir Marmaduke did not wince. He looked his
avowed enemy boldly in the face, with no small measure of contempt for
the violence displayed.

His own enmity towards those who thwarted him was much more subtle,
silent and cautious. He would never storm and rage, show his enmity
openly and caution his antagonist through an outburst of rage. Adam
Lambert still glaring into his lodger's eye, encountered nothing therein
but irony and indulgent contempt.

Religion forbade him to swear. Yet was he sorely tempted, and we may
presume that he cursed inwardly, for his enemy refused to be drawn into
wordy warfare, and he himself had exhausted his vocabulary of sneering
abuse, even as he had exhausted his breath.

Perhaps in his innermost heart he was ashamed of his outburst. After
all, he had taken this man's money, and had broken bread with him. His
hand dropped to his side, and his head fell forward on his breast even
as with a pleasant laugh the prince carelessly turned away, and with an
affected gesture brushed his silken doublet, there where the
blacksmith's hard grip had marred the smoothness of the delicate fabric.

Had Adam Lambert possessed that subtle sixth sense, which hears and sees
that which goes on in the mind of others, he had perceived a thought in
his lodger's brain cells which might have caused him to still further
regret his avowal of open enmity.

For as the blacksmith finally turned away and walked off through the
park, skirting the boundary wall, Sir Marmaduke looked over his shoulder
at the ungainly figure which was soon lost in the gloom, and muttered a
round oath between his teeth.

"An exceedingly unpleasant person," he vowed within himself, "you will
have to be removed, good master, an you get too troublesome."




CHAPTER XI

SURRENDER


But this interview with the inimical Quaker had more than strengthened
Sir Marmaduke's design to carry his bold scheme more rapidly to its
successful issue.

The game which he had played with grave risks for over three months now
had begun to be dangerous. The mysterious patriot from France could not
afford to see prying enemies at his heels.

Anon when the graceful outline of Lady Sue's figure emerged from out the
surrounding gloom, Sir Marmaduke went forward to meet her, and clasped
her to him in a passionate embrace.

"My gracious lady ... my beautiful Sue ..." he murmured whilst he
covered her hands, her brow, her hair with ardent kisses, "you have come
so late--and I have been so weary of waiting ... waiting for you."

He led her through the gardens to where one gigantic elm, grander than
its fellows, had thrown out huge gnarled roots which protruded from out
the ground. One of these, moss-covered, green and soft, formed a perfect
resting place. He drew her down, begging her to sit. She obeyed, scared
somewhat as was her wont when she found him so unfettered and violent.

He stretched himself at full length at her feet, extravagant now in his
acts and gestures like a man who no longer can hold turbulent passion in
check. He kissed the edge of her kirtle, then her cloak and the tips of
her little shoes:

"It was cruel to keep me waiting ... gracious lady--it was cruel," he
murmured in the intervals between these ardent caresses.

"I am so sorry, Amédé," she repeated, grieving to see him so sorrowful,
not a little frightened at his vehemence,--trying to withdraw her hands
from his grasp. "I was detained ..."

"Detained," he rejoined harshly, "detained by someone else ... someone
who had a greater claim on your time than the poor exile ..."

"Nay! 'tis unkind thus to grieve me," she said with tender reproach as
she felt the hot tears gather in her eyes. "You know--as I do--that I am
not my own mistress yet."

"Yes! yes! forgive me--my gracious, sweet, sweet lady.... I am mad when
you are not nigh me.... You do not know--how could you? ... what
torments I endure, when I think of you so beautiful, so exquisite, so
adorable, surrounded by other men who admire you ... desire you,
mayhap.... Oh! my God! ..."

"But you need have no fear," she protested gently, "you know that I gave
my whole heart willingly to you ... my prince ..."

"Nay, but you cannot know," he persisted violently, "sweet, gentle
creature that you are, you cannot guess the agonies which a strong man
endures when he is gnawed by ruthless insane jealousy ..."

She gave a cry of pain.

"Amédé!" for she felt hurt, deeply wounded by his mistrust of her, when
she had so wholly, so fully trusted him.

"I know ... I know," he said with quick transition of tone, fearful that
he had offended her, striving to master his impatience, to find words
which best pleased her young, romantic temperament, "Nay! but you must
think me mad.... Mayhap you despise me," he added with a gentle note of
sadness. "Oh, God! ... mayhap you will turn from me now...."

"No! no!"

"Yet do I worship you ... my saint ... my divinity ... my Suzanne....
You are more beautiful, more adorable than any woman in the world ...
and I am so unworthy."

"You unworthy!" she retorted, laughing gayly through her tears. "You, my
prince, my king! ..."

"Say that once more, my Suzanne," he murmured with infinite gentleness,
"oh! the exquisite sweetness of your voice, which is like dream-music in
mine ears.... Oh! to hold you in my arms thus, for ever ... until death,
sweeter than life ... came to me in one long passionate kiss."

She allowed him to put his arms round her now, glad that the darkness
hid the blush on her cheeks; thus she loved him, thus she had first
learned to love him, ardent, oh, yes! but so gentle, so meek, yet so
great and exalted in his selfless patriotism.

"'Tis not of death you should speak, sweet prince," she said, ineffably
happy now that she felt him more subdued, more trusting and fond,
"rather should you speak of life ... with me, your own Suzanne ... of
happiness in the future, when you and I, hand in hand, will work
together for that great cause you hold so dear ... the freedom and
liberties of France."

"Ah, yes!" he sighed in utter dejection, "when that happy time comes ...
but ..."

"You do not trust me?" she asked reproachfully.

"With all my heart, my Suzanne," he replied, "but you are so beautiful,
so rich ... and other men ..."

"There are no other men for me," she retorted simply. "I love you."

"Will you prove it to me?"

"How can I?"

"Be mine ... mine absolutely," he urged eagerly with passion just
sufficiently subdued to make her pulses throb. "Be my wife ... my
princess ... let me feel that no one could come between us...."

"But my guardian would never consent," she protested.

"Surely your love for me can dispense with Sir Marmaduke's consent...."

"A secret marriage?" she asked, terrified at this strange vista which
his fiery imagination was conjuring up before her.

"You refuse? ..." he asked hoarsely.

"No! no! ... but ..."

"Then you do not love me, Suzanne."

The coolness in his tone struck a sudden chill to her heart. She felt
the clasp of his arms round her relax, she felt rather than saw that he
withdrew markedly from her.

"Ah! forgive me! forgive me!" she murmured, stretching her little hands
out to him in a pathetic and childlike appeal. "I have never deceived
anyone in my life before.... How could I live a lie? ... married to you,
yet seemingly a girl.... Whilst in three months...."

She paused in her eagerness, for he had jumped to his feet and was now
standing before her, a rigid, statuesque figure, with head bent and arms
hanging inert by his side.

"You do not love me, Suzanne," he said with an infinity of sadness,
which went straight to her own loving heart, "else you would not dream
of thus condemning me to three months of exquisite torture.... I have
had my answer.... Farewell, my gracious lady ... not mine, alas! but
another man's ... and may Heaven grant that he love you well ... not as
I do, for that were impossible...."

His voice had died away in a whisper, which obviously was half-choked
with tears. She, too, had risen while he spoke, all her hesitation
gone, her heart full of reproaches against herself, and of love for him.

"What do you mean?" she asked trembling.

"That I must go," he replied simply, "since you do not love me...."

Oh! how thankful she was that this merciful darkness enwrapped her so
tenderly. She was so young, so innocent and pure, that she felt half
ashamed of the expression of her own great love which went out to him in
a veritable wave of passion, when she began to fear that she was about
to lose him.

"No, no," she cried vehemently, "you shall not go ... you shall not."

Her hands sought his in the gloom, and found them, clung to them with
ever-growing ardor; she came quite close to him trying to peer into his
face and to let him read in hers all the pathetic story of her own deep
love for him.

"I love you," she murmured through her tears. And again she repeated: "I
love you. See," she added with sudden determination, "I will do e'en as
you wish.... I will follow you to the uttermost ends of the earth.... I
... I will marry you ... secretly ... an you wish."

Welcome darkness that hid her blushes! ... she was so young--so ignorant
of life and of the world--yet she felt that by her words, her promise,
her renunciation of her will, she was surrendering something to this
man, which she could never, never regain.

Did the first thought of fear, or misgiving cross her mind at this
moment? It were impossible to say. The darkness which to her was so
welcome was--had she but guessed it--infinitely cruel too, for it hid
the look of triumph, of rapacity, of satisfied ambition which at her
selfless surrender had involuntarily crept into Marmaduke's eyes.




CHAPTER XII

A WOMAN'S HEART


It is difficult, perhaps, to analyze rightly the feelings and sensations
of a young girl, when she is literally being swept off her feet in a
whirlpool of passion and romance.

Some few years later when Lady Sue wrote those charming memoirs which
are such an interesting record of her early life, she tried to note with
faithful accuracy what was the exact state of her mind when three months
after her first meeting with Prince Amédé d'Orléans, she plighted her
troth to him and promised to marry him in secret and in defiance of her
guardian's more than probable opposition.

Her sentiments with regard to her mysterious lover were somewhat
complex, and undoubtedly she was too young, too inexperienced then to
differentiate between enthusiastic interest in a romantic personality,
and real, lasting, passionate love for a man, as apart from any halo of
romance which might be attached to him.

When she was a few years older she averred that she could never have
really loved her prince, because she always feared him. Hers, therefore,
was not the perfect love that casteth out fear. She was afraid of him in
his ardent moods, almost as much as when he allowed his unbridled temper
free rein. Whenever she walked through the dark bosquets of the park,
on her way to a meeting with her lover, she was invariably conscious of
a certain trepidation of all her nerves, a wonderment as to what he
would say when she saw him, how he would act; whether chide, or rave, or
merely reproach.

It was the gentle and pathetic terror of a child before a stern yet
much-loved parent. Yet she never mistrusted him ... perhaps because she
had never really seen him--only in outline, half wrapped in shadows, or
merely silhouetted against a weirdly lighted background. His appearance
had no tangible reality for her. She was in love with an ideal, not with
a man ... he was merely the mouthpiece of an individuality which was of
her own creation.

Added to all this there was the sense of isolation. She had lost her
mother when she was a baby; her father fell at Naseby. She herself had
been an only child, left helplessly stranded when the civil war
dispersed her relations and friends, some into exile, others in splendid
revolt within the fastnesses of their own homes, impoverished by pillage
and sequestration, rebellious, surrounded by spies, watching that
opportunity for retaliation which was so slow in coming.

Tossed hither and thither by Fate in spite of--or perhaps because
of--her great wealth, she had found a refuge, though not a home, at Acol
Court; she had been of course too young at the time to understand
rightly the great conflict between the King's party and the Puritans,
but had naturally embraced the cause--for which her father's life had
been sacrificed--blindly, like a child of instinct, not like a woman of
thought.

Her guardian and Mistress de Chavasse stood for that faction of
Roundheads at which her father and all her relatives had sneered even
while they were being conquered and oppressed by them. She disliked them
both from the first; and chafed at the parsimonious habits of the house,
which stood in such glaring contrast to the easy lavishness of her own
luxurious home.

Fortunately for her, her guardian avoided rather than sought her
company. She met him at meals and scarcely more often than that, and
though she often heard his voice about the house, usually raised in
anger or impatience, he was invariably silent and taciturn when she was
present.

The presence of Richard Lambert, his humble devotion, his whole-hearted
sympathy and the occasional moments of conversation which she had with
him were the only bright moments in her dull life at the Court: and
there is small doubt but that the friendship and trust which
characterized her feelings towards him would soon have ripened into more
passionate love, but for the advent into her life of the mysterious
hero, who by his personality, his strange, secretive ways, his talk of
patriotism and liberty, at once took complete possession of her girlish
imagination.

She was perhaps just too young when she met Lambert; she had not yet
reached that dangerous threshold when girlhood looks from out obscure
ignorance into the glaring knowledge of womanhood. She was a child when
Lambert showed his love for her by a thousand little simple acts of
devotion and by the mute adoration expressed in his eyes. Lambert drew
her towards the threshold by his passionate love, and held her back
within the refuge of innocent girlhood by the sincerity and exaltation
of his worship.

With the first word of vehement, unreasoning passion, the mysterious
prince dragged the girl over that threshold into womanhood. He gave her
no time to think, no time to analyze her feelings; he rushed her into a
torrent of ardor and of excitement in which she never could pause in
order to draw breath.

To-night she had promised to marry him secretly--to surrender herself
body and soul to this man whom she hardly knew, whom she had never
really seen; she felt neither joy nor remorse, only a strange sense of
agitation, an unnatural and morbid impatience to see the end of the next
few days of suspense.

For the first time since she had come to Acol, and encountered the
kindly sympathy of Richard Lambert, she felt bitterly angered against
him when, having parted from the prince at the door of the pavilion, she
turned, to walk back towards the house and came face to face with the
young man.

A narrow path led through the trees, from the ha-ha to the gate, and
Richard Lambert was apparently walking along aimlessly, in the direction
of the pavilion.

"I came hoping to meet your ladyship and to escort you home. The night
seems very dark," he explained simply in answer to a sudden, haughty
stiffening of her young figure, which he could not help but notice.

"I was taking a stroll in the park," she rejoined coldly, "the evening
is sweet and balmy but ... I have no need of escort, Master Lambert ...
I thank you.... It is late and I would wish to go indoors alone."

"It is indeed late, gracious lady," he said gently, "and the park is
lonely at night ... will you not allow me to walk beside you as far as
the house?"

But somehow his insistence, his very gentleness struck a jarring note,
for which she herself could not have accounted. Was it the contrast
between two men, which unaccountably sent a thrill of disappointment,
almost of apprehension, through her heart?

She was angry with Lambert, bitterly angry because he was kind and
gentle and long-suffering, whilst the other was violent, even brutal at
times.

"I must repeat, master, that I have no need of your escort," she said
haughtily, "I have no fear of marauders, nor yet of prowling beasts. And
for the future I should be grateful to you," she added, conscious of her
own cruelty, determined nevertheless to be remorselessly cruel, "if you
were to cease that system which you have adopted of late--that of
spying on my movements."

"Spying?"

The word had struck him in the face like a blow. And she, womanlike,
with that strange, impulsive temperament of hers, was not at all sorry
that she had hurt him. Yet surely he had done her no wrong, save by
being so different from the other man, and by seeming to belittle that
other in her sight, against her will and his own.

"I am grieved, believe me," she said coldly, "if I seem unkind ... but
you must see for yourself, good master, that we cannot go on as we are
doing now.... Whenever I go out, you follow me ... when I return I find
you waiting for me.... I have endeavored to think kindly of your
actions, but if you value my friendship, as you say you do, you will let
me go my way in peace."

"Nay! I humbly beg your ladyship's gracious forgiveness," he said; "if I
have transgressed, it is because I am blind to all save your ladyship's
future happiness, and at times the thought of that adventurer is more
than I can bear."

"You do yourself no good, Master Lambert, by talking thus to me of the
man I love and honor beyond all things in this world. You are blind and
see not things as they are: blind to the merits of one who is as
infinitely above you as the stars. But nathless I waste my breath
again.... I have no power to convince you of the grievous error which
you commit. But if you cared for me, as you say you do ..."

"If I cared!" he murmured, with a pathetic emphasis on that little word
"if."

"As a friend I mean," she rejoined still cold, still cruel, still
womanlike in that strange, inexplicable desire to wound the man who
loved her. "If you care for me as a friend, you will not throw yourself
any more in the way of my happiness. Now you may escort me home, an you
wish. This is the last time that I shall speak to you as a friend, in
response to your petty attacks on the man whom I love. Henceforth you
must chose 'twixt his friendship and my enmity!"

And without vouchsafing him another word or look, she gathered her cloak
more closely about her, and walked rapidly away along the narrow path.

He followed with head bent, meditating, wondering! Wondering!




CHAPTER XIII

AN IDEA


The triumph was complete. But of a truth the game was waxing dangerous.

Lady Sue Aldmarshe had promised to marry her prince. She would keep her
word, of that Sir Marmaduke was firmly convinced. But there would of
necessity be two or three days delay and every hour added to the
terrors, the certainty of discovery.

There was a watch-dog at Sue's heels, stern, alert, unyielding. Richard
Lambert was probing the secret of the mysterious prince, with the
unerring eye of the disappointed lover.

The meeting to-night had been terribly dangerous. Sir Marmaduke knew
that Lambert was lurking somewhere in the park.

At present even the remotest inkling of the truth must still be far from
the young man's mind. The whole scheme was so strange, so daring, so
foreign to the simple ideas of the Quaker-bred lad, that its very
boldness had defied suspicion. But the slightest mischance now, a
meeting at the door of the pavilion, an altercation--face to face, eye
to eye--and Richard Lambert would be on the alert. His hatred would not
be so blind, nor yet so clumsy, as that of his brother, the blacksmith.
There is no spy so keen in all the world as a jealous lover.

This had been the prince's first meeting with Sue, since that memorable
day when the secret of their clandestine love became known to Lambert.
Sir Marmaduke knew well that it had been fraught with danger; that every
future meeting would wax more and more perilous still, and that the
secret marriage itself, however carefully and secretively planned, would
hardly escape the prying eyes of the young man.

The unmasking of Prince Amédé d'Orléans before Sue had become legally
his wife was a possibility which Sir Marmaduke dared not even think of,
lest the very thought should drive him mad. Once she was his wife! ...
well, let her look to herself.... The marriage tie would be a binding
one, he would see to that, and her fortune should be his, even though he
had won her by a lie.

He had staked his very existence on the success of his scheme. Lady
Sue's fortune was the one aim of his life, for it he had worked and
striven, and lied: he would not even contemplate a future without it,
now that his plans had brought him so near the goal.

He had one faithful ally, though not a powerful one, in Editha, who,
lured by some vague promises of his, desperate too, as regarded her own
future, had chosen to throw in her lot whole-heartedly with his.

He was closeted with her on the following day, in the tiny
withdrawing-room which leads out of the hall at Acol Court. When he had
stolen into the house in the small hours of the morning he had seen
Richard Lambert leaning out of one of the windows which gave upon the
park.

It seemed as if the young man must have seen him when he skirted the
house, for though there was no moonlight, the summer's night was
singularly clear. That Lambert had been on the watch--spying, as Sir
Marmaduke said with a bitter oath of rage--was beyond a doubt.

Editha too was uneasy; she thought that Lambert had purposely avoided
her the whole morning.

"I lingered in the garden for as long as I could," she said to her
brother-in-law, watching with keen anxiety his restless movements to and
fro in the narrow room, "I thought Lambert would keep within doors if he
saw me about. He did not actually see you, Marmaduke, did he?" she
queried with ever-growing disquietude.

"No. Not face to face," he replied curtly. "I contrived to avoid him in
the park, and kept well within the shadows, when I saw him spying
through the window.

"Curse him!" he added with savage fury, "curse him, for a meddlesome,
spying cur!"

"The whole thing is becoming vastly dangerous," she sighed.

"Yet it must last for another few weeks at least...."

"I know ... and Lambert is a desperate enemy: he dogs Sue's footsteps,
he will come upon you one day when you are alone, or with her ... he
will provoke a quarrel...."

"I know--I know ..." he retorted impatiently, "'tis no use
recapitulating the many evil contingencies that might occur.... I know
that Lambert is dangerous ... damn him! ... Would to God I could be rid
of him ... somehow."

"You can dismiss him," she suggested, "pay him his wages and send him
about his business."

"What were the use? He would remain in the village--in his brother's
cottage mayhap ... with more time on his hands for his spying work....
He would dog the wench's steps more jealously than eve.... No! no!" he
added, whilst he cast a quick, furtive look at her--a look which somehow
caused her to shiver with apprehension more deadly than heretofore.

"That's not what I want," he said significantly.

"What's to be done?" she murmured, "what's to be done?"

"I must think," he rejoined harshly. "But we must get that love-sick
youth out of the way ... him and his airs of Providence in disguise....
Something must be done to part him from the wench effectually and
completely ... something that would force him to quit this neighborhood
... forever, if possible."

She did not reply immediately, but fixed her large, dark eyes upon him,
silently for a while, then she murmured:

"If I only knew!"

"Knew what?"

"If I could trust you, Marmaduke!"

He laughed, a harsh, cruel laugh which grated upon her ear.

"We know too much of one another, my dear Editha, not to trust each
other."

"My whole future depends on you. I am penniless. If you marry Sue...."

"I can provide for you," he interrupted roughly. "What can I do now? My
penury is worse than yours. So, my dear, if you have a plan to propound
for the furtherance of my schemes, I pray you do not let your fear of
the future prevent you from lending me a helping hand."

"A thought crossed my mind," she said eagerly, "the thought of something
which would effectually force Richard Lambert to quit this neighborhood
for ever."

"What were that?"

"Disgrace."

"Disgrace?" he exclaimed. "Aye! you are right. Something mean ... paltry
... despicable ... something that would make her gracious ladyship turn
away from him in disgust ... and would force him to go away from here
... for ever."

He looked at her closely, scrutinizing her face, trying to read her
thoughts.

"A thought crossed your mind," he demanded peremptorily. "What is it?"

"The house in London," she murmured.

"You are not afraid?"

"Oh!" she said with a careless shrug of the shoulders.

"The Protector's spies are keen," he urged, eager to test her courage,
her desire to help him.

"They'll scarce remember me after two years."

"Hm! Their memory is keen ... and the new laws doubly severe."

"We'll be cautious."

"How can you let your usual clients know? They are dispersed."

"Oh, no! My Lord Walterton is as keen as ever and Sir James Overbury
would brave the devil for a night at hazard. A message to them and we'll
have a crowd every night."

"'Tis well thought on, Editha," he said approvingly. "But we must not
delay. Will you go to London to-morrow?"

"An you approve."

"Aye! you can take the Dover coach and be in town by nightfall. Then
write your letters to my Lord Walterton and Sir James Overbury. Get a
serving wench from Alverstone's in the Strand, and ask the gentlemen to
bring their own men, for the sake of greater safety. They'll not
refuse."

"Refuse?" she said with a light laugh, "oh, no!"

"To-day being Tuesday, you should have your first evening entertainment
on Friday. Everything could be ready by then."

"Oh, yes!"

"Very well then, on Friday, I, too, will arrive in London, my dear
Editha, escorted by my secretary, Master Richard Lambert, and together
we will call and pay our respects at your charming house in Bath
Street."

"I will do my share. You must do yours, Marmaduke. Endicott will help
you: he is keen and clever. And if Lambert but takes a card in his hand
..."

"Nay! he will take the cards, mine oath on that! Do you but arrange it
all with Endicott."

"And, Marmaduke, I entreat you," she urged now with sudden earnestness,
"I entreat you to beware of my Lord Protector's spies. Think of the
consequences for me!"

"Aye!" he said roughly, laughing that wicked, cruel laugh of his, which
damped her eagerness, and struck chill terror into her heart, "aye! the
whipping-post for you, fair Editha, for keeping a gaming-house. What? Of
a truth I need not urge you to be cautious."

Probably at this moment she would have given worlds--had she possessed
them--if she could but have dissociated herself from her
brother-in-law's future altogether. Though she was an empty-headed,
brainless kind of woman, she was not by nature a wicked one. Necessity
had driven her into linking her fortunes with those of Sir Marmaduke.
And he had been kind to her, when she was in deep distress: but for him
she would probably have starved, for her beauty had gone and her career
as an actress had been, for some inexplicable reason, quite suddenly cut
short, whilst a police raid on the gaming-house over which she presided
had very nearly landed her in a convict's cell.

She had escaped severe punishment then, chiefly because Cromwell's laws
against gambling were not so rigorous at the time as they had since
become, also because she was able to plead ignorance of them, and
because of the status of first offense.

Therefore she knew quite well what she risked through the scheme which
she had so boldly propounded to Sir Marmaduke. Dire disgrace and infamy,
if my Lord Protector's spies once more came upon the gamesters in her
house--unawares.

Utter social ruin and worse! Yet she risked it all, in order to help
him. She did not love him, nor had she any hopes that he would of his
own free will do more than give her a bare pittance for her needs once
he had secured Lady Sue's fortune; but she was shrewd enough to reckon
that the more completely she was mixed up in his nefarious projects, the
more absolutely forced would he be to accede to her demands later on.
The word blackmail had not been invented in those days, but the deed
itself existed and what Editha had in her mind when she risked ostracism
for Sir Marmaduke's sake was something very akin to it.

But he, in the meanwhile, had thrown off his dejection. He was full of
eagerness, of anticipated triumph now.

The rough idea which was to help him in his schemes had originated in
Editha's brain, but already he had elaborated it; had seen in the plan a
means not only of attaining his own ends with regard to Sue, but also
of wreaking a pleasing vengeance on the man who was trying to frustrate
him.

"I pray you, be of good cheer, fair Editha," he said quite gaily. "Your
plan is good and sound, and meseems as if the wench's fortune were
already within my grasp."

"Within our grasp, you mean, Marmaduke," she said significantly.

"Our grasp of course, gracious lady," he said with a marked sneer, which
she affected to ignore. "What is mine is yours. Am I not tied to the
strings of your kirtle by lasting bonds of infinite gratitude?"

"I will start to-morrow then. By chaise to Dover and thence by coach,"
she said coldly, taking no heed of his irony. "'Twere best you did not
assume your romantic rôle again until after your own voyage to London.
You can give me some money I presume. I can do nothing with an empty
purse."

"You shall have the whole contents of mine, gracious Editha," he said
blandly, "some ten pounds in all, until the happy day when I can place
half a million at your feet."




PART II




CHAPTER XIV

THE HOUSE IN LONDON


It stood about midway down an unusually narrow by-street off the Strand.

A tumble-down archway, leaning to one side like a lame hen, gave access
to a dark passage, dank with moisture, whereon the door of the house
gave some eighteen feet up on the left.

The unpaved street, undrained and unutterably filthy, was ankle-deep in
mud, even at the close of this hot August day. Down one side a long
blank wall, stone-built and green with mildew, presented an unbroken
frontage: on the other the row of houses with doors perpetually barred,
and windows whereon dust and grit had formed effectual curtains against
prying eyes, added to the sense of loneliness, of insecurity, of unknown
dangers lurking behind that crippled archway, or beneath the shadows of
the projecting eaves, whence the perpetual drip-drip of soot water came
as a note of melancholy desolation.

From all the houses the plaster was peeling off in many places, a prey
to the inclemencies of London winters; all presented gray facades, with
an air of eeriness about their few windows, flush with the outside
wall--at one time painted white, no doubt, but now of uniform dinginess
with the rest of the plaster work.

There was a grim hint about the whole street of secret meetings, and of
unavowable deeds done under cover of isolation and of darkness, whilst
the great crooked mouth of the archway disclosing the blackness and
gloom of the passage beyond, suggested the lair of human wild beasts who
only went about in the night.

As a rule but few passers-by availed themselves of this short and narrow
cut down to the river-side. Nathless, the unarmed citizen was scared by
these dank and dreary shadows, whilst the city watchman, mindful of his
own safety, was wont to pass the mean street by.

Only my Lord Protector's new police-patrol fresh to its onerous task,
solemnly marched down it once in twenty-four hours, keeping shoulder to
shoulder, looking neither to right nor left, thankful when either issue
was once more within sight.

But in this same evening in August, 1657, it seemed as if quite a number
of people had business in Bath Street off the Strand. At any rate this
was specially noticeable after St. Mary's had struck the hour of nine,
when several cloaked and hooded figures slipped, one after another, some
singly, others in groups of two or three, into the shadow of the narrow
lane.

They all walked in silence, and did not greet one another as they
passed; some cast from time to time furtive looks behind them; but
every one of these evening prowlers seemed to have the same objective,
for as soon as they reached the crippled archway, they disappeared
within the gloom of its yawning mouth.

Anon when the police-patrol had gone by and was lost in the gloom there
where Bath Street debouches on the river bank, two of these heavily
cloaked figures walked rapidly down from the Strand, and like the others
slipped quickly under the archway, and made straight for the narrow door
on the left of the passage.

This door was provided with a heavy bronze knocker, but strangely enough
the newcomers did not avail themselves of its use, but rapped on the
wooden panels with their knuckles, giving three successive raps at
regular intervals.

They were admitted almost immediately, the door seemingly opening of
itself, and they quickly stepped across the threshold.

Within the house was just as dark and gloomy as it was without, and as
the two visitors entered, a voice came from out the shadows, and said,
in a curious monotone and with strange irrelevance:

"The hour is late!"

"And 'twill be later still," replied one of the newcomers.

"Yet the cuckoo hath not called," retorted the voice.

"Nor is the ferret on the prowl," was the enigmatic reply. Whereupon
the voice speaking in more natural tones added sententiously:

"Two flights of steps, and 'ware the seventeenth step on the first
flight. Door on the left, two raps, then three."

"Thank you, friend," rejoined one of the newcomers, "'tis pleasant to
feel that so faithful a watch guards the entrance of this palace of
pleasure."

Thereupon the two visitors, who of a truth must have been guided either
by instinct or by intimate knowledge of the place, for not a gleam of
light illumined the entrance hall, groped their way to a flight of stone
stairs which led in a steep curve to the upper floors of the house.

A rickety banister which gave ominously under the slightest pressure
helped to guide the visitors in this utter darkness: but obviously the
warning uttered by that mysterious challenging voice below was not
superfluous, for having carefully counted sixteen steps in an upward
direction, the newcomers came to a halt, and feeling their way forward
now with uttermost caution, their feet met a yawning hole, which had
soon caused a serious accident to a stranger who had ventured thus far
in ignorance of pitfalls.

A grim laugh, echoed by a lighter one, showed that the visitors had
encountered only what they had expected, and after this brief episode
they continued their journey upwards with a firmer sense of security; a
smoky oil lamp on the first floor landing guided their footsteps by
casting a flickering light on the narrow stairway, whereon slime and
filth crept unchecked through the broken crevices between the stones.

But now as they advanced, the silence seemed more broken: a distinct hum
as of many voices was soon perceptible, and anon a shrill laugh,
followed by another more deep in tone, and echoed by others which
presently died away in the distance.

By the time the two men had reached the second floor landing these many
noises had become more accentuated, also more distinct; still muffled
and subdued as if proceeding from behind heavy doors, but nevertheless
obvious as the voices of men and women in lively converse.

The newcomers gave the distinctive raps prescribed by their first
mentor, on the thick panels of a solid oak door on their left.

The next moment the door itself was thrown open from within; a flood of
light burst forth upon the gloomy landing from the room beyond, the
babel of many voices became loud and clear, and as the two men stood for
a moment beneath the lintel a veritable chorus of many exclamations
greeted them from every side.

"Walterton! begad!"

"And Overbury, too!"

"How late ye come!"

"We thought ye'd fallen a victim to Noll's myrmidons!"

It was of a truth a gay and merry company that stood, and moved,
chatted and laughed, within the narrow confines of that small
second-floor room in the gloomy house in Bath Street.

The walls themselves were dingy and bare, washed down with some grayish
color, which had long since been defaced by the grime and dust of
London. Thick curtains of a nondescript hue fell in straight folds
before each window, and facing these there was another door--double
paneled--which apparently led to an inner room.

But the place itself was brilliantly illuminated with many wax candles
set in chandeliers. These stood on the several small tables which were
dotted about the room.

These tables--covered with green baize, and a number of chairs of
various shapes and doubtful solidity were the only furniture of the
room, but in an arched recess in the wall a plaster figure holding a
cornucopia, from whence fell in thick profusion the plaster presentments
of the fruits of this earth, stood on an elevated pedestal, which had
been draped with crimson velvet.

The goddess of Fortune, with a broken nose and a paucity of fingers,
dominated the brilliant assembly, from the height of her crimson throne.
Her head had been crowned with a tall peaked modish beaver hat, from
which a purple feather rakishly swept over the goddess's left ear. An
ardent devotee had deposited a copper coin in her extended, thumbless
hand, whilst another had fixed a row of candle stumps at her feet.

There was nothing visible in this brilliantly lighted room of the sober
modes to which the eye of late had become so accustomed. Silken doublets
of bright and even garish colors stood out in bold contrast against the
gray monotone of the walls and hangings. Fantastic buttons, tags and
laces, gorgeously embroidered cuffs and collars edged with priceless
Mechlin or d'Alençon, bunches of ribands at knee and wrists, full
periwigs and over-wide boot-hose tops were everywhere to be seen, whilst
the clink of swords against the wooden boards and frequent volleys of
loudly spoken French oaths, testified to the absence of those Puritanic
fashions and customs which had become the general rule even in London.

Some of the company sat in groups round the green-topped tables whereon
cards or dice and heaps of gold and smaller coins lay in profusion.
Others stood about watching the games or chatting to one another. Mostly
men they were, some old, some young--but there were women too, women in
showy kirtles, with bare shoulders showing well above the colverteen
kerchief and faces wherein every line had been obliterated by plentiful
daubs of cosmetics. They moved about the room from table to table,
laughing, talking, making comments on the games as these proceeded.

The men apparently were all intent--either as actual participants or
merely as spectators--upon a form of amusement which His Highness the
Lord Protector had condemned as wanton and contrary to law.

The newcomers soon divested themselves of their immense dark cloaks,
and they, too, appeared in showy apparel of silk and satin, with tiny
bows of ribands at the ends of the long curls which fell both sides of
their faces, and with enormous frills of lace inside the turned-over
tops of their boots.

Lord Walterton quite straddled in his gait, so wide were his boot tops,
and there was an extraordinary maze of tags and ribands round the edge
of Sir James Overbury's breeches.

"Make your game, gentlemen, make your game," said the latter as he
advanced further into the room. And his tired, sleepy eyes brightened at
sight of the several tables covered with cards and dice, the guttering
candles, the mountains of gold and small coin scattered on the green
baize tops.

"Par Dieu! but 'tis a sight worth seeing after the ugly sour faces one
meets in town these days!" he added, gleefully rubbing his beringed
hands one against the other.

"But where is our gracious hostess?" added Lord Walterton, a
melancholy-looking young man with pale-colored eyes and lashes, and a
narrow chest.

"You are thrice welcome, my lord!" said Editha de Chavasse, whose
elegant figure now detached itself from amongst her guests.

She looked very handsome in her silken kirtle of a brilliant greenish
hue, lace primer, and high-heeled shoes--relics of her theatrical days;
her head was adorned with the bunches of false curls which the modish
hairdressers were trying to introduce. The plentiful use of cosmetics
had obliterated the ravages of time and imparted a youthful appearance
to her face, whilst excitement not unmixed with apprehension lent a
bright glitter to her dark eyes.

Lord Walterton and Sir James Overbury lightly touched with their lips
the hand which she extended to them. Their bow, too, was slight, though
they tossed their curls as they bent their heads in the most approved
French fashion. But there was a distinct note of insolence, not
altogether unmixed with irony, in the freedom with which they had
greeted her.

"I met de Chavasse in town to-day," said Lord Walterton, over his
shoulder before he mixed with the crowd.

"Yes! he will be here to-night," she rejoined. Sir James Overbury also
made a casual remark, but it was evident that the intention and purpose
of these gay gentlemen was not the courteous entertainment of their
hostess. Like so many men of all times and all nations in this world,
they were ready enough to enjoy what she provided for them--the illicit
pastime which they could not get elsewhere--but they despised her for
giving it them, and cared naught for the heavy risks she ran in keeping
up this house for their pleasure.




CHAPTER XV

A GAME OF PRIMERO


At a table in the immediate center of the room a rotund gentleman in
doublet and breeches of cinnamon brown taffeta and voluminous lace cuffs
at the wrists was presiding over a game of Spanish primero.

A simple game enough, not difficult of comprehension, yet vastly
exciting, if one may form a judgment of its qualities through watching
the faces of the players.

The rotund gentleman dealt a card face downwards to each of his
opponents, who then looked at their cards and staked on them, by pushing
little piles of gold or silver forward.

Then the dealer turned up his own card, and gave the amount of the
respective stakes to those players whose cards were of higher value than
his own, whilst sweeping all other moneys to swell his own pile.

A simple means, forsooth, of getting rid of any superfluity of cash.

"Art winning, Endicott?" queried Lord Walterton as, he stood over the
other man, looking down on the game.

Endicott shrugged his fat shoulders, and gave an enigmatic chuckle.

"I pay King and Ace only," he called out imperturbably, as he turned up
a Queen.

Most of the stakes came to swell his own pile, but he passed a handful
of gold to a hollow-eyed youth who sat immediately opposite to him, and
who clutched at the money with an eager, trembling grasp.

"You have all the luck to-night, Segrave," he said with an oily smile
directed at the winner.

"Make your game, gentlemen," he added almost directly, as he once more
began to deal.

"I pay knave upwards!" he declared, turning up the ten of clubs.

"Mine is the ten of hearts," quoth one of the players.

"Ties pay the bank," quoth Endicott imperturbably.

"Mine is a queen," said Segrave in a hollow tone of voice.

Endicott with a comprehensive oath threw the entire pack of cards into a
distant corner of the room.

"A fresh pack, mistress!" he shouted peremptorily.

Then as an overdressed, florid woman, with high bullhead fringe and
old-fashioned Spanish farthingale, quickly obeyed his behests, he said
with a coarse laugh:

"Fresh cards may break Master Segrave's luck and improve yours, Sir
Michael."

"Before this round begins," said Sir James Overbury who was standing
close behind Lord Walterton, also watching the game, "I will bet you,
Walterton, that Segrave wins again."

"Done with you," replied the other, "and I'll back mine own opinion by
taking a hand."

The florid woman brought him a chair, and he sat down at the table, as
Endicott once more began to deal.

"Five pounds that Segrave wins," said Overbury.

"A queen," said Endicott, turning up his card. "I pay king and ace
only."

Everyone had to pay the bank, for all turned up low cards; Segrave alone
had not yet turned up his.

"Well! what is your card, Master Segrave?" queried Lord Walterton
lightly.

"An ace!" said Segrave simply, displaying the ace of hearts.

"No good betting against the luck," said young Walterton lightly, as he
handed five sovereigns over to his friend, "moreover it spoils my
system."

"Ye play primero on a system!" quoth Sir Michael Isherwood in deep
amazement.

"Yes!" replied the young man. "I have played on it for years ... and it
is infallible, 'pon my honor."

In the meanwhile the doors leading to the second room had been thrown
open; serving men and women advanced carrying trays on which were
displayed glasses and bottles filled with Rhenish wine and Spanish
canary and muscadel, also buttered ale and mead and hypocras for the
ladies.

Editha did not occupy herself with serving but the florid woman was
most attentive to the guests. She darted in and out between the tables,
managing her unwieldy farthingale with amazing skill. She poured out the
wines, and offered tarts and dishes of anchovies and of cheese, also
strange steaming beverages lately imported into England called coffee
and chocolate.

The women liked the latter, and supped it out of mugs, with many little
cries of astonishment and appreciation of its sugariness.

The men drank heavily, chiefly of the heady Spanish wines; they ate the
anchovies and cheese with their fingers, and continually called for more
refreshments.

Play was of necessity interrupted. Groups of people eating and drinking
congregated round the tables. The men mostly discussed various phases of
the game; there was so little else for idlers to talk about these days.
No comedies or other diversions, neither cock-fighting nor bear-baiting,
and abuse of my Lord Protector and his rigorous disciplinarian laws had
already become stale.

The women talked dress and coiffure, the new puffs, the fanciful
pinners.

But at the center table Segrave still sat, refusing all refreshment,
waiting with obvious impatience for the ending of this unwelcome
interval. When first he found himself isolated in the crowd, he had
counted over with febrile eagerness the money which lay in a substantial
heap before him.

"Saved!" he muttered between his teeth, speaking to himself like one
who is dreaming, "saved! Thank God! ... Two hundred and fifty pounds ...
only another fifty and I'll never touch these cursed cards again ...
only another fifty...."

He buried his face in his hands; the moisture stood out in heavy drops
on his forehead. He looked all round him with ever-growing impatience.

"My God! why don't they come back! ... Another fifty pounds ... and I
can put the money back ... before it has been missed.... Oh! why don't
they come back!"

Quite a tragedy expressed in those few muttered words, in the trembling
hands, the damp forehead. Money taken from an unsuspecting parent,
guardian or master, which? What matter? A tragedy of ordinary occurrence
even in those days when social inequalities were being abolished by act
of Parliament.

In the meanwhile Lord Walterton, halting of speech, insecure of
foothold, after his third bumper of heady sack, was explaining to Sir
Michael Isherwood the mysteries of his system for playing the noble game
of primero.

"It is sure to break the bank in time," he said confidently, "I am for
going to Paris where play runs high, and need not be carried on in this
hole and corner fashion to suit cursed Puritanical ideas."

"Tell me your secret, Walterton," urged worthy Sir Michael, whose broad
Shropshire acres were heavily mortgaged, after the rapine and pillage
of civil war.

"Well! I can but tell you part, my friend," rejoined the other, "yet
'tis passing simple. You begin with one golden guinea ... and lose it
... then you put up two and lose again...."

"Passing simple," assented Sir Michael ironically.

"But after that you put up four guineas."

"And lose it."

"Yea! yea! mayhap you lose it ... but then you put up eight guineas ...
and win. Whereupon you are just as you were before."

And with a somewhat unsteady hand the young man raised a bumper to his
lips, whilst eying Sir Michael with the shifty and inquiring eye
peculiar to the intoxicated.

"Meseems that if you but abstain from playing altogether," quoth Sir
Michael impatiently, "the result would still be the same.... And suppose
you lose the eight guineas, what then?"

"Oh! 'tis vastly simple--you put up sixteen."

"But if you lose that?"

"Put up thirty-two...."

"But if you have not thirty-two guineas to put up?" urged Sir Michael,
who was obstinate.

"Nay! then, my friend," said Lord Walterton with a laugh which soon
broke into an ominous hiccough, "ye must not in that case play upon my
system."

"Well said, my lord," here interposed Endicott, who had most moderately
partaken of a cup of hypocras, and whose eye and hand were as steady as
heretofore. "Well said, pardi! ... My old friend the Marquis of
Swarthmore used oft to say in the good old days of Goring's Club, that
'twas better to lose on a system, than to play on no system at all."

"A smart cavalier, old Swarthmore," assented Sir Michael gruffly, "and
nathless, a true friend to you, Endicott," he added significantly.

"Another deal, Master Endicott," said Segrave, who for the last quarter
of an hour had vainly tried to engage the bank-holder's attention.

Nor was Lord Walterton averse to this. The more the wine got into his
head, the more unsteady his hand became, the more strong was his desire
to woo the goddess whose broken-nosed image seemed to be luring him to
fortune.

"You are right, Master Segrave," he said thickly, "we are wasting
valuable time. Who knows but what old Noll's police-patrol is lurking in
this cutthroat alley? ... Endicott, take the bank again.... I'll swear
I'll ruin ye ere the moon--which I do not see--disappears down the
horizon. Sir Michael, try my system.... Overbury, art a laggard? ... Let
us laugh and be merry--to-morrow is the Jewish Sabbath--and after that
Puritanic Sunday ... after which mayhap, we'll all go to hell, driven
thither by my Lord Protector. Wench, another bumper ... canary, sack or
muscadel ... no thin Rhenish wine shall e'er defile this throat!
Gentlemen, take your places.... Mistress Endicott, can none of these
wenches discourse sweet music whilst we do homage to the goddess of
Fortune? ... To the tables ... to the tables, gentlemen ... here's to
King Charles, whom may God protect ... and all in defiance of my Lord
Protector!"




CHAPTER XVI

A CONFLICT


In the hubbub which immediately followed Lord Walterton's tirade, Editha
de Chavasse beckoned to the florid woman--who seemed to be her
henchwoman--and drew her aside to a distant corner of the room, where
there were no tables nigh and where the now subdued hum of the voices,
mingling with the sound of music on virginal and stringed instruments,
made a murmuring noise which effectually drowned the talk between the
two women.

"Have you arranged everything, Mistress Endicott?" asked Editha,
speaking in a whisper.

"Everything, mistress," replied the other.

"Endicott understands?"

"Perfectly," said the woman, with perceptible hesitation, "but ..."

"What ails you, mistress?" asked Editha haughtily, noting the
hesitation, and frowning with impatience thereat.

"My husband thinks the game too dangerous."

"I was not aware," retorted Mistress de Chavasse dryly, "that I had
desired Master Endicott's opinion on the subject."

"Mayhap not," rejoined the other, equally dryly, "but you did desire his
help in the matter ... and he seems unmindful to give it."

"Why?"

"I have explained ... the game is too dangerous."

"Or the payment insufficient?" sneered Editha. "Which is it?"

"Both, mayhap," assented Mistress Endicott with a careless shrug of her
fat shoulders, "the risks are very great. To-night especially...."

"Why especially to-night?"

"Because ever since you have been away from it, this house--though we
did our best to make it seem deserted--hath been watched--of that I feel
very sure.... My Lord Protector's watchmen have a suspicion of our ...
our evening entertainments ... and I doubt not but that they desire to
see for themselves how our guests enjoy themselves these nights."

"Well?" rejoined Editha lightly. "What of that?"

"As you know, we did not play for nigh on twelve months now.... Endicott
thought it too dangerous ... and to-night ..."

She checked herself abruptly, for Editha had turned an angry face and
flashing eyes upon her.

"To-night?" said Mistress de Chavasse curtly, but peremptorily, "what of
to-night? ... I sent you orders from Thanet that I wished the house
opened to-night ... Lord Walterton, Sir James Overbury and as many of
our usual friends as were in the town, apprised that play would be in
full progress.... Meseems," she added, casting a searching look all
round the room, "that we have singularly few players."

"It was difficult," retorted the other with somewhat more diffidence in
her tone than had characterized her speech before now. "Young Squire
Delamere committed suicide ... you remember him? ... and Lord Cooke
killed Sir Humphrey Clinton in a duel after that fracas we had here,
when the police-patrol well-nigh seized upon your person.... Squire
Delamere's suicide and Sir Humphrey's death caused much unpleasant talk.
And old Mistress Delamere, the mother, hath I fear me, still a watchful
eye on us. She means to do us lasting mischief.... It had been wiser to
tarry yet awhile.... Twelve months is not sufficient for throwing the
dust of ages over us and our doings.... That is my husband's opinion and
also mine.... A scandal such as you propose to have to-night, will bring
the Protector's spies about our ears ... his police too, mayhap ... and
then Heaven help us all, mistress ... for you, in the country, cannot
conceive how rigorously are the laws enforced now against gambling,
betting, swearing or any other form of innocent amusement.... Why! two
wenches were whipped at the post by the public hangman only last week,
because forsooth they were betting on the winner amongst themselves,
whilst watching a bout of pell-mell.... And you know that John Howthill
stood in the pillory for two hours and had both his hands bored through
with a hot iron for allowing gambling inside his coffeehouse. ... And
so, mistress, you will perceive that I am speaking but in your own
interests...."

Editha, who had listened to the long tirade with marked impatience, here
interrupted the voluble lady, with harsh command.

"I crave your pardon, mistress," she said peremptorily. "My interests
pre-eminently consist in being obeyed by those whom I pay for doing my
behests. Now you and your worthy husband live here rent free and derive
a benefit of ten pounds every time our guests assemble.... Well! in
return for that, I make use of you and your names, in case of any
unpleasantness with the vigilance patrol ... or in case of a scandal
which might reach my Lord Protector's ears.... Up to this time your
positions here have been a sinecure.... I even bore the brunt of the
last fracas whilst you remained practically scathless.... But to-night,
I own it, there may be some risks ... but of a truth you have been well
paid to take them."

"But if we refuse to take the risks," retorted the other.

"If you refuse, mistress," said Editha with a careless shrug of the
shoulders, "you and your worthy lord go back to the gutter where I
picked you up ... and within three months of that time, I should
doubtless have the satisfaction of seeing you both at the whipping-post,
for of a truth you would be driven to stealing or some other equally
unavowable means of livelihood."

"We could send _you_ there," said Mistress Endicott, striving to
suppress her own rising fury, "if we but said the word."

"Nay! you would not be believed, mistress ... but even so, I do not
perceive how my social ruin would benefit you."

"Since we are doomed anyhow ... after this night's work," said the woman
sullenly.

"Nay! but why should you take so gloomy a view of the situation? ... My
Lord Protector hath forgot our existence by now, believe me ... and of a
surety his patrol hath not yet knocked at our door.... And methinks,
mistress," added Editha significantly, "'tis not in _your_ interest to
quarrel with me."

"I have no wish to quarrel with you," quoth Mistress Endicott, who
apparently had come to the end of her resistance, and no doubt had known
all along that her fortunes were too much bound up with those of
Mistress de Chavasse to allow of a rupture between them.

"Then everything is vastly satisfactory," said Editha with forced
gayety. "I rely on you, mistress, and on Endicott's undoubted talents to
bring this last matter to a successful issue to-night. ... Remember,
mistress ... I rely on you."

Perhaps Mistress Endicott would have liked to prolong the argument. As a
matter of fact, neither she nor her husband counted the risks of a
midnight fracas of great moment to themselves: they had so very little
to lose. A precarious existence based on illicit deeds of all sorts had
rendered them hard and reckless.

All they wished was to be well paid for the risks they ran; neither of
them was wholly unacquainted with the pillory, and it held no great
terrors for them. There were so many unavowable pleasures these days,
which required a human cloak to cover the identity of the real
transgressor, that people like Master and Mistress Endicott prospered
vastly.

The case of Mistress de Chavasse's London house wherein the ex-actress
had some few years ago established a gaming club, together with its
various emoluments attached thereunto, suited the Endicotts'
requirements to perfection: but the woman desired an increase of payment
for the special risk she would run to-night, and was sorely vexed that
she could not succeed in intimidating Editha with threats of
vigilance-patrol and whipping-posts.

Mistress de Chavasse knew full well that the Endicotts did not intend to
quarrel with her, and having threatened rupture unless her commands were
obeyed, she had no wish to argue the matter further with her henchwoman.

At that moment, too, there came the sound of significant and methodical
rappings at the door. Editha, who had persistently throughout her
discussion with Mistress Endicott, kept one ear open for that sound,
heard it even through the buzz of talk. She made a scarcely visible
gesture of the hand, bidding the other woman to follow her: that gesture
was quickly followed by a look of command.

Mistress Endicott presumably had finally made up her mind to obey. She
shrugged her fat shoulders and followed Mistress de Chavasse as far as
the center of the room.

"Remember that you are the hostess now," murmured Editha to her, as she
herself went to the door and opened it.

With an affected cry of surprise and pleasure she welcomed Sir Marmaduke
de Chavasse, who was standing on the threshold, prepared to enter and
escorted by his young secretary, Master Richard Lambert.




CHAPTER XVII

RUS IN URBE


One or two of the men looked up as de Chavasse entered, but no one took
much notice of him.

Most of those prese

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