“And who brought you up?” he asked again.
“A French nurse, who sent me away when I was five years old because no one paid her for me, telling me the name of a relation of whom she had heard my mother often speak.”
“What became of you?”
“As I was weeping and begging on the high road, a minister from Kingston took me in, instructed me in the Calvinistic faith, taught me all he knew himself and aided me in my researches after my family.”
“And these researches?”
“Were fruitless; chance did everything.”
“You discovered what had become of your mother?”
“I learned that she had been assassinated by my relation, aided by four friends, but I was already aware that I had been robbed of my wealth and degraded from my nobility by King Charles I.”
“Oh! I now understand why you are in the service of Cromwell; you hate the king.”
“Yes, my lord, I hate him!” said the young man.