Rose Marie, feeling still strangely perturbed, her heart beating with a nameless fear, which she could not herself understand, threw open the window and stepped out onto the balcony. Rupert Kestyon was standing just below, giving impatient directions to his men anent the disposition of the luggage. The sound of the opening window and of Rose Marie's footsteps above, caused him to look up and at sight of her he uttered a loud oath. It was evident that he had completely lost all control over himself.
"You have run it too late, d—n you!" he shouted roughly. "Now we cannot get through Fleet Street till after that accursed mob hath dispersed."
Rose Marie with lips compressed and brows closely puckered withdrew out of his sight, blushing with shame at the thought that a group of serving-girls who stood also on the balcony not far from her, giggling and chattering, should have heard her husband's rough words.
But the wenches were evidently too much engrossed with their desire to see something of what was going on beyond the hostelry gates to pay much heed to the pale, foreign miss and to her doings, and even as Rose Marie prepared once more to join her father, she heard one girl say excitedly:
"He won't be passing by for another few minutes—we'll have time to run to the gates—"
"No! no! Cannot you hear the shouts? They are bringing him along now," cried another, holding with both hands to the iron railing, the while her companion tried to drag her away.
"I can just see over the heads of the crowd," said another. "Here they come! Here they come! Can you hear them all hooting?"
And she herself indulged in a vicious "Boo! Down with the traitor! Down with the Papists!"
Beyond the gates, the crowd, invisible to Rose Marie, was evidently giving vent to its excitement. As the wench had said, they were hooting lustily. Shouts of "Death to the traitors!" mingled with obvious cries of terror and of pain following immediately on the clatter of horses' hoofs on the mud-covered street.
"It's a closed vehicle!" said one of the girls on the balcony in obvious disappointment.