She was aware also of the invisible bars broken down, of the rush. And next, even to her bewildered senses, there came the feeling of a change, a halt.
It was like a flood at full tide miraculously arrested. Shots followed each other in rapid succession outside; and other sounds now, a roll of drums, words of command, some cheers, began to mingle with those hideous recurrent yells. The throng that struggled to pour in through the broken door recoiled.
“The guards! the guards are on us!” was now the cry.
And with the curious unanimity of crowds general panic succeeded general fury. Above the torrential sound of feet on the pavement, a voice, clear yet panting, like the blast of a running trumpeter, rose ever nearer.
“Make way, in the King’s name!”
Then Diana heard the Abbess’s “Deo gratias”; heard Lionel curse as his grasp relaxed; heard him curse again as he leaped forward, brandishing the stump of his sword, and, in vain frenzy, striving to stop the fugitives.
Harry Rockhurst was the first of the rescuers to dash through the gaping door. The Lord Constable had in truth reached the gateway before him, but had stood aside to let his son pass. Bare-headed, his black curls flying, his face set with the sternness of fierce intent, Diana for one delirious instant took the son for the father—the father as she had first met him in pride of noble strength, when she had loved him, unbidden. And as he sprang toward her, crying out in accents of unmeasurable joy, “Diana—safe!” she cast herself into his arms.
Now, even as he held her, she knew who it was, knew that there was youth in his pressure, an unhampered ecstasy of leaping blood. But yet she clung to him the closer, past and present so inextricably mingled in her thought that all she felt, all she cared to know, was that now, here, her heart had come home at last!
The inner circle of their joy lasted but the moment of a radiant bubble. About them the turmoil still raged. There was one, within a few yards, white-haired, grappling with a furious blood-stained ruffian. Diana clutched her lover’s arm.