She was silent for a few moments. "And better so," she said at last.
A traitor or patriot?
"You wouldn't mind, Ruth," he said bitterly. "It wouldn't matter a scrap to you if you never saw me again. I know that;" and he turned away.
"It would matter very much," she answered. "I think my life—my outside life—would feel like this little stream here, when the winter comes, and the flowers and the sunshine are all gone—"
"Dear child! Dear Ruth!"
"But," she went on, gently pushing away the hands he was stretching out to her—"but still in my heart there would have been sunshine; because I could have thought of Lawrence Lee as an honourable man, and not as a traitor. What would Madam Lee think of you, Lawrence, if she knew this that I know?"
"Hush!" he murmured, closing his eyes and knitting his brows.
"And your father," she went on; "he was of no such poor flimsy stuff. He died for his king; true to the death."
"He believed in him," said Lawrence. "For my part—well, I speak as I hear, Ruth. His worst enemies never denied Charles the First had his good points; but the best friends of Charles the Second say 'tis difficult to find his; and as for his faults, he's as full of them as—"
"As you are, or any other mortal man. Come, tell me, you silly boy, you, do you think that if these gentlemen—these fine 'friends' of yours, who want to be rid, as you call it, of His Majesty—were ruling England in his place, the country would fare happier? For my part," went on Ruth, when no response from Lawrence appeared to be forthcoming, "I doubt my father would make a rare stern tyrant. And as for you, Lawrence—" but something in this notion suddenly upset all Ruth's sober eloquence, and it rippled away in a peal of merry laughter.