She was of the same type as my lord—blonde, graceful, worn, and beautiful—younger than he, but looking no less.
She was writing letters at a side table, and when he entered rose up instantly, with a little sigh of relief.
"'Tis so wild abroad to-night," she said.
The Earl laid down on the mantelshelf the overblown white rose he had brought from Whitehall, and looked at his wife.
"I see we also rejoice that the bishops are acquitted," he remarked.
"The candles, you mean? It had to be—all the windows had been broken else. They needed to call the soldiers out to protect the Chapel in Sardinia Street."
He seated himself at the centre table and pulled from his pocket several opened letters that he scattered before him; his wife came and stood opposite, and they looked at each other intently across the candles.
"What doth it mean?" she asked.
"That the King walketh blindly on to ruin," he answered concisely, with a wicked flashing glance over the correspondence before him.
"The People will not take much more?"