And she glanced in the mirror above the mantelpiece, looking at her grey hair and meek face.
"I would sooner not put this up in Whitehall for all the world to gape at!" she said.
"Ah, mother!" cried Betty Claypole, and embraced her and kissed her hand.
"Did you not expect this?" asked the Lord-General mournfully. "I did so—because," he added, with great simplicity, "I saw no other fitted for the place."
"There is no other" said his daughter. "He is one and only—is it not so, mother? And thou art one and only, too, dear, and wilt shine in Whitehall far higher than the French Queen."
The Lord-General turned with a little smile to both of them.
"By now you should be used to living in a palace," he said.
"What will they say of us?" asked Elisabeth Cromwell, still troubled. "They will say that we have put ourselves up in the King's place."
"There is no king," interrupted Cromwell firmly. "And as for the place I undertake to fill, the whole people have called me to it, yea, the whole people."
He repeated this statement as if to persuade and convince himself; he well knew that his authority came from a very few of the people, mainly from the army leaders, and that his election was not the result of a general demand on the part of the nation; only the minority had hailed him, the majority remained as always, passive, almost indifferent—or fiercely hostile.