Cromwell sat motionless awhile, holding his hand before his eyes.
"The Scots," he was swiftly thinking, "what a turn is here ... he will not take the Covenant.... Then he is ours for the asking ... helpless any way ... the Scots!... Thou art an ill statesman, Charles Stewart.... Methinks the war is ended."
CHAPTER IX
THE END OF THE WAR
In June of that year two women sat together in an upper room of a humble, though decent, house in London, near the Abbey of Westminster and the Hall where the Parliament was now sitting.
This was a back street, crooked and obscure; never as yet had it been touched nor disturbed by the clamours and tumults which of late had risen and fallen through the broad ways of London like the tempestuous rising and falling of the winter sea.
In the little garden stood a lime tree, now in full leaf, and the sun, striking through the branches, filled the room with a soft greenish light, and in and out the boughs and sometimes in and out of the open window a white butterfly fluttered.
The two women sat near the window and talked together in low voices.
One was in her prime but spoilt by sorrow and sickness, her blonde hair mixed with grey as if dust had been sprinkled upon it, her face peaked and thin, her lids heavy, her eyes dimmed; the other little beyond girlhood, but she too disfigured by suffering, and nothing remaining to her of the pleasant beauty of youth save the flowing richness of her red-gold curls.