“I could never love a rebel,” she said, perversely.
Gabriel, bitterly disappointed, remained absolutely silent. A bee flew humming loudly into the arbour, then roamed forth once more to the apple blossom on a tree hard by. There was a faint stirring, too, in the shrubs just behind them in the churchyard as Peter Waghorn, who had followed the movements of the Parliamentary Captain with stealthy malevolence, crouched down that he might hear what treason was being plotted betwixt this half-hearted officer and the Vicar’s Royalist niece. The two noticed nothing, for they were absorbed in their own thoughts.
“Why are you a rebel, Gabriel?” said Hilary, more quietly, as she lifted her face to his pleadingly. “Oh, think better of it! ’Tis not too late. Many men have changed sides. Think how good our King is!”
Her appeal moved him painfully, a look of keen distress dawned in his eyes.
“A good man, but an untrustworthy King,” he said, controlling his agitation with difficulty. “Nay, we won’t argue. You well know that I fight for the ancient rights and liberties of Englishmen, and even for love of you, Hilary, I can’t turn back! I can’t turn back! And yet, oh! my God! how hard it is!”
“I did not mean to pain you,” said Hilary, remorsefully. “Nay, I longed to tell you how it pleased me to hear all that you said when Waghorn would have pulled down the cross. Are you still in Sir William Waller’s army?”
“No, at present I am serving under Colonel Massey, but I hope ere long to be sent to Sir Thomas Fairfax at Windsor, where he is forming the New Model Army.”
“You will serve under him?”
“My great wish is to follow in my father’s steps, but just now I am to act as the bearer of important despatches. Enough, however, of my affairs. Do tell me of yourself. If only you guessed how I had hungered for news of you!”
“’Twere far better that you forgot me,” she said, beginning to play with the little housewife that hung from her girdle.