"Will that crime be attempted?" cried the electric voice of the orator. "Yes! I believe it will be attempted." Then there was a low murmur among the mass, and a changing of feet that made an ominous, scuffling sound. "What then? Then it will be every man's duty to strike down the enemies of the people—to destroy them, so that we and our children shall not be destroyed. We do not appeal to the sword, but the sword is ours, and we can use it terribly. Their blood be upon their own heads who dare to lay their hands on the charter of the people's rights!"
In the wave of tremendous applause that followed these words Mary Lincoln looked at Dacre, who had turned from the window. His face, always severe, was now set in fierce sternness. Again she was on the point of going to him to speak the warning that was burning her heart, but she saw Dacre suddenly draw himself up proudly, as if he had been challenged. She followed his look and saw her father meet Dacre's glance as sword meets sword.
Every line in Richard Lincoln, from bent brow to clenched hand, seemed filled with the meaning of the orator's ominous words.
The two men, standing almost within arm's reach, looked for one earnest moment into each other's eyes and hearts. What might have followed, who can say, had not the engagement been broken from without. Mary Lincoln passed between them, and laying her hand on her father's arm spoke to him, asking to be taken home. The father's eyes fell to the troubled face, and without speaking he went with his daughter.
Mary and her father were hardly missed out of the bright party; but one face became smoother when they had departed—the Beauty's. The gloom of the public meeting brought out the brilliant elements of the gathering with rare effect.
From group to group flashed Mrs. Carey, and her lips and eyes were less eloquent than the clinging touch of her arm, which was almost a caress, as she left or tried to leave her impression of sympathy and admiration on one after another of the Royalists.
Two men she avoided, instinctively and deliberately—Geoffrey Ripon and Sir John Dacre. Calculating, cool, unprincipled as she was, she feared to meet the eyes of these two men, whose very lives she had undermined and sold.
It was eleven o'clock and most of the ladies had gone, when the beautiful woman, attended by Featherstone, drew her soft cloak round her in her carriage and gave her hand, without a glove, to be kissed by the big colonel, bending in the doorway.
"Your driver knows where to go?" asked Featherstone, closing the door.
"Oh, yes; straight home," answered Mrs. Carey, smiling; "good-night."