"True, Sir Philip. There is little that I can offer you now; yet methinks there is a seat for you."
The young man hesitated, and then sat down.
"I have not learned diplomacy on battle-fields, Sir Ralph, therefore I will without preamble tell you what is heavy on my heart. First, to be selfishly eager, I have come to ask you for what you promised years ago—your daughter. Sir Ralph de Mohun, you were once young, and blood coursed as fiery then as now. Can you find it in your heart to separate us? Then, secondly, your old friends at court offer entire restitution and pardon, if you will accept the new régime, with England's faith."
"If I have been true to my country, then must I still be true to my God! Philip Stratherne, if I had not loved you from your boyhood, the words that would come to my lips would tell you what my heart wills to speak to all who have proved false! For the rest, my daughter has the Mohun blood, and she knows what her church teaches."
And Beatrice sat silent, crushed as a lily powerless from the storm. She knew her duty, she felt her love. Reason—honor told her that even love could not span the chasm through which the blood of her gallant brothers flowed. They, too, had followed the fortunes of the Stuart king, and one lay dead before the bastions of Londonderry, while another gave up his young life with the war-shout on his fearless lips, in the van of his father's regiment at Newtown-butler.
It was Philip Stratherne who led the detachment of Enniskillen horse that rode down the mere handful of Irish dragoons, inspired by Guy Mohun's ringing cry; and Sir Ralph had listened to Philip Stratherne's voice, as, clear and steady, it rallied the Enniskilleners to the charge that had snatched that last son from him. Not only for the Stuart had he yielded his glorious life, but for the cross, for the faith, in the defence of which centuries had borne brave testimony for the Mohuns, not only in bonnie England, but on every battle-field in Christendom.
A stern self-control subdued the old man; but the girl, the woman was suffering; honor commanded, duty pleaded, but a wilder, stronger, stormier feeling fought within her now. The color crimsoned the fair face, and the sweet eyes turned, rested for one moment on the young man with all the girl's tenderness, all the woman's passion—a mute appeal, a dying cry for help; then with the delicate hands clasped tightly over her breast, as though to keep down the heart's mad struggling, she spoke so low that the words seemed almost inarticulate, yet to the man listening with such painful eagerness each sound knelled the death which knows no "resurgam!" Only the simple words came faltering forth, came sobbing as the wind soughs the prelude to destruction, ere the lightning scathes its fiery death; and so in this whisper he heard,
"Were I a false Mohun, I could not be a true Stratherne."
Then without a word she left them; and when the old man sought her, he found her lying as one dead before her crucifix. Tenderly he raised her, and from his lips sounded the prayer: