"The man has run, Mr. Swaffham, and madame there knows it."
"You have nothing to do with Lady Matilda. If the house has been searched, your business here is finished. You can go."
"Mr. Swaffham, if you don't know, you ought to be told, that Anthony Lynn—just dead and gone—was a double-dyed Royalist scoundrel; and I and my men here will swear to it. He confessed it, joyed himself in the death struggle against the Lord Protector; we all heard the man's own words;" and the sheriff touched with the point of his boot, the lifeless body of Anthony Lynn.
"Touch off!" cried Matilda. "How dare you boot the dead? You infinite scoundrel!"
"Sheriff, your duty is done. It were well you left here, and permitted the dead to have his rights."
"He is a traitor! A King's man! A lying Puritan!"
"He is nothing at all to us, or to the world, now. To his Master above he will stand or fall; not to you or me, or even to the law of England."
Then he turned to Matilda and led her to a sofa, and comforted her; and the men-servants came and took away the dead body and laid it, as Anthony wished, on his old master's bed. Lady Jevery went weeping to her room, and the sound of lamentation and of sorrow passed up and down the fine stairway, and filled the handsome rooms. But the dead man lay at peace, a smile of gratified honour on his placid face, as if he yet remembered that he had, at the last moment, justified himself to his conscience and his King.
And in the great salon, now cleared of its offending visitors, Cymlin sat comforting Matilda. He could not let this favourable hour slip; he held her hand and soothed her sorrow, and finally questioned her in a way that compelled her to rely, in some measure, upon him.
"Stephen was here yesterday?" he asked.