"Thou to talk of God's people, heretic of heretic, who hast rejected even thine own deluded Church!"
"Ay, and the blue and brown of the Presbyter as well as the lawn sleeves of the Bishop," cried Cromwell, pacing up and down in that agitation that often came on him when he was excited by any attack on his religious sincerity. "If the prayer-book is but a mess of pottage, what is the preaching of the Covenanters but dry chips offered to the soul starving for spiritual manna? Men of all sects fight side by side in my ranks—would they could do so at Westminster." He suddenly checked himself as he perceived that he was saying more than his place and dignity required, controlled the agitation that had hurried him into speech, and turned to Lady Pawlet, not without pity and tenderness—
"Gaveston, conduct this lady to Naseby where are the other gentlewomen taken to-day, and give her name and quality to Sir Thomas Fairfax. Take out the malignant and place him with his fellows in the trenches."
At this the unhappy wife gave a shriek and hurled herself across the dead Cavalier, desperately clinging to his limp arms and pressing her bright head against his bloodied coat.
"My dear, they want to put you in the ground! I went to find you—you were alive; what has happened now? I found you; what has happened? They shall not take you away. Leave me," as Gaveston tried to move her from the body; "he is not dead." She looked up and the tears were falling down her cheeks. "I have nothing of him—no child. Would you take him away?"
"Leave them here," said Cromwell. Since he had beheld his wife mourning her two eldest sons he could not bear to see a woman weep, and the young Cavalier had still that dreadful look of young Oliver. "Send some woman from the village to her, and in the morning, when she is removed, you might bury him. Take my things upstairs—wait"——He broke open the packages and, holding them near the candlelight, looked over the contents.
"Nothing I need answer to-night," he said, and glanced again at the slim figure of the young woman as she clung to her dead in her agony, the bright unbounded hair all that was left of beauty that had been so fresh and lovely.
"So is it with the ungodly," he muttered sombrely. "How suddenly do they perish, consume, and come to a fearful end! Even like a dream when one awaketh!"
So saying, he turned abruptly into the garden and walked away from the house.
All the June flowers showed silver pale against the dark lines of the hedges and the box trees clipped into the forms of dragons and peacocks—monstrous, clumsy shapes now against a sky filled with the pale purity of the moonlight. Somewhere a fountain tinkled a thin jet of water into a shallow basin; a seat, a sundial, a statue showed here and there as the pleasance led to the fishpond, where the wet leaves of water-lilies gleamed, and, past that, a bowling-green, shaded with noble limes, then to the orchards of apple trees bending above the tall grass scattered with daisies, where the grounds ended in a wooden paling which fenced a little copse full of hidden birds and flowers.