"Why should you fear a cold success in this great venture?" she asked. "Truly it is a great and awful thing to take a king's place, but shall not the Lord still support you as hitherto, and bless you with notable victories?"
Cromwell, still staring into the fire, answered slowly.
"I have some sparks of the light of His countenance, which keeps me alive—yet I see ahead difficulties greater than any I have yet met. What are charges in the field compared to factions in the State? I say the saints failed, and shall not I fail? Will not men say to me, as the Hebrew said to Moses—'Who made thee a Prince and a judge over us. Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?"
Elisabeth shuddered.
"Ay, I killed the Egyptian," continued Cromwell, glooming, "but there are many more out of Egypt ready to take his place, ready to confound us, yea, there are plenty of diabolic persons abroad, ready to set snares for the godly, even the devil and all his angels are lying in wait to thwart this England which the Lord hath elected for His own!"
"But thou canst meet and conquer them, if it be in the power of any man to do so," returned Elisabeth simply. "Again I say it is a high and fearful thing that thou must undertake, but I know that in all things thou wilt walk according to the Gospel."
The Lord-General turned to look at her as she knelt beside him in her rosy gown with the firelight glowing over her, her faced upturned, and her hands clasped on the arm of his chair—a sweet comforter truly, in her seriousness and loving encouragement, in her eager belief in him and rapt piety.
"That is not how many will speak of me, Betty," he said, with a sad tenderness. "Rather will they call me usurper and traitor, and say that I have put down others for carnal ambition. Many hard and contemptuous things will be said of me, Betty."
"I know," she answered bravely, "but need we care?"
As she spoke, a third came down the shadowy room, and joined them—Elisabeth Cromwell.