A housewife's case and a small Bible hung by cords to her waist; she had nothing of gold or silver but her worn wedding ring, yet she gave the impression of something high and fine and aristocratic.
She sat in a deep, cushioned chair with a hooded top; the failing light had baffled the eyes that were still so keen, and the needlework was dropped on her lap.
At her feet, on a small footstool, sat her grandchild, she who had brightened the house at Ely with her balls of holly berries, her red ribbons, her laughter, and her songs, and who now brightened the finer town house when she visited there; she was no longer an inmate of her father's home, for, though only seventeen, Elisabeth was a year married and now Mrs. Claypole.
Neither in dress nor manner was she a Puritan; her lavender-blue silk gown, flowing open on a lemon-coloured petticoat, her deep falling collar and cuffs of Flemish lace, the bow of rose colour at her breast and in her hair, her white sarcenet shoes with the silver buckles, the long ringlets which escaped the pearl comb and fell on her shoulders, even her piquant bright face, with eyes slightly languishing and mouth slightly wilful, seemed more to belong to the now exiled court of Henriette Marie than to the household of the leader of the Roundhead army.
Yet there was nothing frivolous in the appearance of Elisabeth Claypole; her prettiness had a pensive cast, her glance often a seriousness unusual for her age, and if she sometimes showed a pride, a vanity, or an impatience, impossible to her sweetly austere sister, Bridget Ireton, she was not less noble and pious, brave and good, and perhaps her deeper tenderness, her greater gaiety, her warmer love of life were not such sins in the eyes of the God whom she had always been taught to fear; yet sins her father called them, though he knew they made her lovable, though he found her sweeter than Bridget, who was gentle perfection.
Sitting here now, in the closing day, with the firelight flushing her delicate clothes and her sensitive face, and the shadows encroaching on her hair, here, with the cheerful noises of London without and the cheerful atmosphere of home within, she talked to her grandmother of the one subject every one must talk of this wondrous winter—the King's bewildered flight from Hampton, his aimless two days' riding, his final turning to the Isle of Wight and giving himself up to the Governor there, Colonel Hammond, whom he had reason to believe was loyalist at heart.
Yet here again the King had been, as ever, unfortunate; Robert Hammond, tempted at first to take the King where he wished, yet remained true to his trust, and the unhappy Stewart was again a prisoner, now at Carisbrooke, kept more strictly than before—and a portentous silence hung over the nation; English, Scots, Presbyterians, Independents, Parliamentarians, the army, the Royalists—all seemed waiting—"Waiting for what?" asked Elisabeth Claypole, voicing the question England was asking.
"For the Lord to show His will towards this poor kingdom," said Mrs. Cromwell simply. "Surely He will dispose it all to mercy."
"Mercy?" repeated the young girl thoughtfully. "I see little mercy abroad. Much blood and bitterness—but no mercy."