"Hush, Matilda! Your words belie you. You mean them not. But there is no time for words now, we shall leave here for England in two days. If Prince Rupert loves you so much as to marry you, there are ways and means to accomplish that end. If money only is the lack, I shall be no miser, if I may ensure your happiness."

"Dear uncle, shall we not return by The Hague?"

"No. Lord Neville has promised to do my business there. It is only a matter of collecting a thousand pounds from my merchant; but he is going to take charge of your aunt's jewels, and you had better trust yours also with him. They will be safer in the saddle of a horseman than in a guarded traveling coach. In the latter case, robbers are sure there is plunder; in the former it is most unlikely."

"I will not trust anything I possess to Lord Neville. Nothing!"

"The man trusted by Cromwell is above suspicion."

"It is his interest to be honest with Cromwell."

"You are angry at Neville."

"I have good reason. He is always the bringer of bad news. The order to leave Paris and the Prince could have come only through him."

"The Prince knows how he may keep you at his side."

"Oh! I am weary of balancing things impossible. The Prince cannot marry like a common man."

"Then he should only make love to such women as are fit to marry with him. I have said often what I thought right in this affair; I have offered to help it with my gold as far as I can – that is all about it, Matilda. I say no more."

"It is enough," answered Lady Jevery. "Matilda cannot wish to put in danger your liberty or life."

"My happiness is of less consequence, aunt."

"Certainly it is;" and there was such an air of finality in Lady Jevery's voice that Matilda rose and went to her own apartments to continue her complaints. This she did with passionate feeling in a letter to Prince Rupert, in which she expressed without stint her hatred of Lord Neville and her desire for his punishment. Rupert was well inclined to humour her wish. He had seen the young Commonwealth messenger, and his handsome person and patrician manner had given him a moment's envious look back to the days when he also had been young and hopeful, and full of faith in his own great future. The slight hauteur of Neville, his punctilious care for Cromwell's instructions, his whole bearing of victory, as against his own listless attitude of "failure," set his mind in a mood either to ignore the young man, or else by the simplest word or incident to change from indifference to dislike.

Matilda's letter furnished the impetus to dislike. He said to himself, "Neville showed more insolence and self-approval in the presence of his Eminence than I, after all my wars and adventures, would have presumed on, under any circumstances. He wants a lesson, and it will please Matilda if I give him it; and God knows there is so little I can do to pleasure her!" At this point in his reflections, he called his equerry and bid him "find out the lodgings of Lord Neville, and watch him by day and night;" adding, "Have my Barbary horse saddled, and when this Englishman leaves his lodging, bring me instant word of the course he takes."

The next morning he spent with Matilda. She was in tears and despair, and Rupert could do nothing but weep and despair with her. He indeed renewed with passionate affection his promise to marry her as soon as this was possible, but the possibility did not appear at hand to either of them. Rupert certainly could have defied every family and caste tradition, and made the girl so long faithful to him at once his wife; but how were they to live as became his rank? For in spite of popular suppositions to the contrary, he was in reality a poor man, and he could not become a pensioner on Sir Thomas Jevery, even if Sir Thomas had been able to give him an income at all in unison with Rupert's ideas of the splendid life due to his position and achievements.

But he had not long to wait for an opportunity to meet Neville. While he was playing billiards the following afternoon with the Duke of Yorke, his equerry arrived at the Palais Royale with his horse. Neville had taken the northern road out of the city, and it was presumably the homeward road. Rupert followed quickly, but Neville was a swift, steady rider, and he was not overtaken till twenty miles had been covered, and the daylight was nearly lost in the radiance of the full moon. Rupert put spurs to his horse, passed Neville at a swift gallop, then suddenly wheeling, came at a rush towards him, catching his bridle as they met.

"Alight," he said peremptorily.

Neville shook his bridle free, and asked,

"By whose orders?"

"Mine."

"I will not obey them."

"You will alight. I have a quarrel to settle with you."

"On what ground?"

"Say it is on the ground of your mistress. I am Earl de Wick's friend."

"I will not fight on such pretense. My mistress would deny me if I did."

"Fight for your honour, then."

Neville laughed. "I know better. And before what you call Honour, I put Duty."

"Then fight for the papers and money in your possession. I want them."

"Ha! I thought so. You are a robber, it seems. The papers and gold are not mine, and I will fight rather than lose them. But I warn you that I am a good swordsman."

"Heaven and hell! What do I care? Alight, and prove your boast."

"If you are in such a hurry to die, go and hang yourself. On second thoughts, I will not fight a thief. I am a noble, and an honourable man."

"If you do not alight at once, I will slay your horse. You shall fight me, here and now, with or without pretense."

Then Neville flung himself from his horse and tied the animal to a tree. Rupert did likewise, and the two men rapidly removed such of their garments as would interfere with their bloody play. They were in a lonely road, partially shaded with great trees; not a human habitation was visible, and there were no seconds to see justice done in the fight, or secure help after it, if help was needed. But at this time the lack of recognised formalities was no impediment to the duel. Rupert quickly found that he had met his match. Neville left him not a moment's breathing space, but never followed up his attacks; until at last Rupert called out insolently, "When are you going to kill me?"

The angry impatience of the inquiry probably induced a moment's carelessness, and Rupert did not notice that in the struggle their ground had insensibly been changed, and Neville now stood directly in front of a large tree. Not heeding the impediment, Rupert made a fierce thrust with the point of his sword, which Neville evaded by a vault to one side, so that Rupert's sword striking the tree, sprang from his hand at the impact. As it fell to the ground, Neville reached it first, and placed his foot upon it. Rupert stood still and bowed gravely. He was at Neville's mercy, and he indicated his knowledge of this fact by the proud stillness of his attitude.

"It was an accident," said Neville; "and an accident is God's part in any affair. Take your life from my hand. I have no will to wish your death." He offered his hand as he spoke, and Rupert took it frankly, answering,

"'Tis no disgrace to take life from one so gallant and generous, and I am glad that I can repay the favour of your clemency;" then he almost whispered in Cluny's ear three words, and the young man started visibly, and with great haste untied his horse.

"We would better change horses," said Rupert; "mine is a Barb, swift as the wind."

But Cluny could not make the change proposed without some delay, his papers and jewels being bestowed in his saddle linings. So with a good wish the two men parted, and there was no anger between them; – admiration and good will had taken its place. Neville hastened forward, as he had been advised, and Rupert returned to Paris. He knew Matilda was expecting him, and he pictured to himself her disappointment and anxiety at his non-appearance; it was also her last evening in Paris, and it grieved him to miss precious hours of love, that might never be given him again. Yet he was physically exhausted, and as soon as he threw himself upon a couch he forgot all his weariness and all his anxieties in a deep sleep.

Matilda was not so happy as to find this oblivion. She knew over what social pitfalls every man of prominence in Paris walked – in the King's favour one day, in the Bastile the next day – and that this very insecurity of all good things made men reckless. Rupert might have offended King Louis or the great Cardinal. She imagined a hundred causes for flight or fight or imprisonment; she recalled one story after another of nobles and gentlemen seen flourishing in the presence of Louis one day and then never seen again. She knew that plots and counterplots, party feuds and family hatreds, were everywhere rife; and that Rupert was rash and outspoken, and had many enemies among the courtiers of Louis and the exiled nobles of England, not to speak of the Commonwealth spies, to whom he was an object of superstitious hatred, who regarded his blackamoors as familiar spirits, and believed firmly that "he had a devil," and worked evil charms by the devil's help and advice. And above all, and through these sad forebodings, there was the ever present likelihood of a duel. Every man had sword in hand, ready to settle some terrible or trivial quarrel – though it did not require a quarrel to provoke the duel; men fought for a word, for a sign, for the colour of a ribbon, for nothing at all, for the pleasure of killing themselves to kill time.

Matilda was keenly alive to all these possible tragedies, and when her lover failed to keep what was likely to be their last tryst, she was more frightened than angry; yet when Rupert came at an exceptionally early hour in the morning, and she saw him safe and well, her anxiety became flavoured with displeasure.

"How could you so cruelly disappoint me?" she cried. "You see now that our time is nearly gone; in a few hours we must part, perhaps forever."

"My dearest, loveliest Mata, I was about your pleasure. I was following Lord Neville, and he took me further than I expected. When my business was done with him, I had twenty miles to ride back to Paris; and I confess to you, I was so weary that I could only sleep. In your love, remember how lately I have been sick to death."

"Lord Neville again! The man is an incubus. Why did you follow him?"

"You wished me to give him a lesson. He was going homeward. I had to ride last night, or let him escape. By my troth, I had only your pleasure in mind."

"Oh, but the price paid was too great! I had to give up your society for hours. That is a loss I shall mourn to the end of my life. I hope, then, that you killed him. Nothing less will suffice for it."

"I was out of fortune, as I always am. I had an accident, and was at his mercy. He gave me my life."

"Now, indeed, you pierce my heart. You at his mercy! It is an intolerable shame! It will make me cry out, even when I sleep! I shall die of it. You! You! to be at his mercy – at the mercy of that Puritan braggart. Oh, I cannot endure it!"

"You see that I endure it very complacently, Mata. The man behaved as a gentleman and a soldier. I have even taken a liking to him. I have also paid back his kindness; we are quits, and as soldiers, friends. It was an accident, and as Neville very piously said, 'Accidents are God's part in an affair;' and therefore we would not be found fighting against God. You know, Mata, that I have been very religiously brought up. And I can assure you no one's honour suffered, mine least of all."

But Matilda was hard to comfort. Her last interview with her lover was saddened and troubled by this disagreement; and though both were broken-hearted in the moments of farewell, Matilda, watching Rupert across the Place Royale, discovered in the listless impatience of his attitude and movements, that inward revolt against outward strife, which, if it had found a voice, would have ejaculated, "I am glad it is over."

This, then, was the end of the visit from which she had expected so much; and one sad gray morning in November they reached London. Sir Thomas was like a man released from a spell, and he went about his house and garden in a mood so happy that it was like a psalm of gratitude to be with him. Lady Jevery was equally pleased, though less ready to show her pleasure; but to Matilda, life appeared without hope – a state of simple endurance, for she had no vital expectation that the morrow, or any other morrow, would bring her happiness.

The apparently fateful interference of Neville in her affairs made her miserable. She thought him her evil genius, the bearer of bad news, the bringer of sorrow. She felt Rupert's "accident" as part of the bad fate. She had been taught fencing, and Cymlin Swaffham had often declared her a match for any swordsman, so that she knew, as well as Rupert knew, no honour had been lost between him and Neville. But the "accident" touched her deeper than this: she regarded it as a proof that the stars were still against her good fortune, separating her from her lover, influencing Neville and his party for victory, and dooming the King and his party to defeat in all their relationships, private and national.

She said to herself in the first hours of her return that she would not see Jane, but as the day wore on she changed her mind. She wished to write Rupert every particular about national events, and she could best feel the Puritan pulse through Jane; while from no one else could she obtain a knowledge of the household doings of Cromwell and his family. Then, also, she wished Jane to see her new dresses, and to hear of the great and famous people she had been living among. What was the use of being familiar with princesses, if there was no one to talk to about them? And Matilda had so much to say concerning the ex-Queen of Bohemia and her clever daughters, that she could not deny herself the society of Jane as a listener. So she wrote and asked her to come, and Jane answered the request in person, at once. This hurry of welcome was a little malapropos. Matilda had not assumed the dress and style she had intended, and the litter of fine clothing about her rooms, and the partially unpacked boxes, gave to her surroundings an undignified and unimpressive character. But friendship gives up its forms tardily; people kiss each other and say fond words long after the love that ought to vitalise such symbols is dead and buried; and for awhile the two girls did believe themselves glad to meet again. There were a score of things delightful to women over which they could agree, and Jane's admiration for her friend's beautiful gowns and laces and jewels, and her interest in Matilda's descriptions of the circumstances in which they were worn, was so genuine, that Matilda had forgotten her relation to Lord Neville, when the irritating name was mentioned.

"Did you see Lord Neville in Paris?" Jane asked; and there was a wistful anxiety in her voice to which Matilda ought to have responded. But the question came when she was tired even of her own splendours and successes; she had talked herself out, and was not inclined to continue conversation if the subject of it was to be one so disagreeable. "No," she answered sharply. "I did not see him. He called one day, and had a long talk with Sir Thomas, but aunt had a headache, and I had more delightful company."

"I thought for my sake you would see him. Did you hear anything of his affairs?"

"Indeed, I heard he gave great offense to Cardinal Mazarin by his authoritative manner."

"Oh!"

"You know, Jane, that he has a most presuming, haughty way? He has!"

"I am sure he has not, Matilda."

"Every one wondered at Cromwell sending a mere boy on such delicate and important business. It was considered almost an insult to Mazarin."

"How can you say such things, Matilda? The business was neither delicate nor important. It was merely to deliver a parcel to Mazarin. Cluny was not charged with any explanations, and I am sure he took nothing on himself."

"I only repeat what I heard – that he carried himself as if he were a young Atlas, and had England's fate and honour on his shoulders."

"You can surely also repeat something pleasant. Did you hear of him at the minister's, or elsewhere? He is not one to pass through a room and nobody see him."

"I heard nothing about him but what I have told you. He prevented my seeing the Queen of Bohemia on my return, because he offered to attend to my uncle's business at The Hague for him; and for this interference I do not thank Lord Neville."

"Nor I," answered Jane. "Had he not gone to The Hague he might have been in London by this time." Then wishing to avoid all unpleasantness, she said, "To be sure it is no wonder you forgot me and my affairs. You have been living a fairy tale, Matilda; and the fairy prince has been living it with you. How charming!"

Matilda was instantly pleased, her voice became melodious, her face smiling and tender. "Yes," she answered, "a fairy tale, and my prince was so splendid, so famous, so adored, kings, cardinals, great men of all kinds, and the loveliest women in France sought him, but he left all to sit at my side;" and then the girls sat down, hand in hand, and Matilda told again her tale of love, till they were both near to weeping. This sympathy made Matilda remember more kindly Jane's dreams and hopes concerning her own love affair, and though she hated Neville, she put aside the ill feeling and asked, "Pray now, Jane, what about your marriage? Does it stand, like mine, under unwilling stars?"

"No. I am almost sure my father has changed his mind; perhaps the Lord General has helped him to do so, for no man, or woman either, takes such sweet interest in a true love affair. He is always for making lovers happy, whether they be his own sons and daughters or those of his friends; and he likes Cluny so much that when he returns he is to have a command at Edinburgh. And I can see father and mother have been talking about our marriage. One morning, lately, mother showed me the fine damask and house linen she is going to give me, and another morning she looked at my sewing and said, 'I might as well hurry a little; things might happen sooner than I thought for;' and then she kissed me, and that is what mother doesn't often do, out of time and season."

Jane had risen as she said these words, and was tying on her bonnet, and Matilda watched her with a curious interest. "I was wondering," she said slowly, "if you will be glad to marry Cluny Neville and go away to Scotland with him."

"Oh, yes," Jane answered, her eyes shining, her mouth wreathed in smiles, her whole being expressing her delight in such an anticipation. Matilda made no further remark, but when Jane had closed the door behind her, she sat down thoughtfully by the fire, and stirring together the red embers, sighed rather than said —

"Why do people marry and bring up sons and daughters? This girl has been loved to the uttermost by her father and mother and brothers, and she will gladly leave them all to go off with this young Scot. She will call it 'Sacrifice for Love's sake;' I call it pure selfishness. Yet I am not a whit whiter than she. I would have stayed in Paris with Rupert, though my good uncle was in danger. How dreadful it is to look into one's own soul, and make one's self tell it the honest truth. I think I will go to my evening service;" and as she rose for her Common Prayer, she was saying under her breath, "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. And there is no health in us."

Lady Jevery had a dinner party that night, and Matilda went down to it in considerable splendour. Doctor Hewitt was present, and Mr. Waller, the poet, and Denzil Hollis, and the witty, delightful Henry Marten, and Matilda's great favourite, the little royalist linen draper, Izaak Walton, whose Complete Angler had just been published. He had brought Sir Thomas a copy of it, and Matilda found out at once the song, "Come live with me and be my love." Her praises were very pleasant to the old man, who had hid Donne and Hooker and Herbert in his Inner Chamber during the days of the Long Parliament; who had been the friend of bishops Ken and Sanderson, and of archbishops Usher and Sheldon; and who, born in Elizabeth's reign, had lived to see "Sceptre and Crown tumbled down."

"But you are not the only author of Great Oliver's reign," she said with a whimsical smile. "This day Mistress Dorothy Osborne sent me a copy of the poems of my Lady Newcastle. She has been making herself still more absurd than she is by writing a book – and in verse. 'Sure,' said Mistress Dorothy to me, 'if I did not sleep for a month, I should never come to that point.' Why does her husband let her run loose? I vow there are soberer people in Bedlam."

"Her husband adores her; he believes her to be a prodigy of learning."

"They are a couple of fools well met. I am sorry for them. She dashes at everything, and he goes about trumpeting her praises. Come, sir, I hear the company tossing Cromwell's name about. Let us join the combatants; I wish to be in the fray."

The fact was Sir Thomas had asked after political affairs since he left England in April, and there was plenty of material for discussion. Denzil Hollis was describing the opening of the Parliament summoned by Cromwell, and which met on the fourth of July. "He made to this Parliament," he said, "a wonderful speech. He declared that he 'did not want supreme power, no, not for a day, but to put it into the hands of proper persons elected by the people.' And he bid them 'be humble and not consider themselves too much of a Parliament.' And then he burst into such a strain as none ever heard, taking texts from psalms, and prophets and epistles, mingled with homely counsels, and entreaties to them to do their duty – speaking till the words fell red hot from his lips, so that when he ended with the psalm on Dunbar field we were all ready to sing it with him; for as he told us, with a shining face, 'the triumph of the psalm is exceeding high and great, and God is now accomplishing it.'"

"No English Parliament was ever opened like that," said Sir Thomas. "Has it done anything yet?"

"It has done too much. It has committees at work looking into the affairs of Scotland and Ireland, the navy, the army and the law. They have been through the jails, and set three hundred poor debtors free in London alone. They have abolished titles and the Court of Chancery; and the last two acts have made the nation very uneasy. Upon my honour, the people are more unhappy at getting rid of their wrongs than you would credit."

"Englishmen like something to grumble about," said Mr. Walton. "If the Commonwealth leaves them without a grievance, it will doom itself."

"That is not it, Mr. Walton," said Henry Marten; "Englishmen don't like the foundations destroyed in order to repair the house. Going over precipices is not making progress. You may take it for an axiom that as a people, we prefer abuses to novelties."

"The reign of the saints is now begun," said Doctor Hewitt scornfully; "and Sir Harry Vane is afraid of what he has prayed for. He has gone into retirement, and sent Cromwell word he would wait for his place until he got to heaven."

"Sir Harry is not one of Zebedee's sons."

"This Parliament is going too fast."

"They have no precedents to hamper them."

"Everything old is in danger of being abolished."

"They talk of reducing all taxation to one assessment on land and property. Absurd!"

"Some say they will burn the records in the Tower; and the law of Moses is to take the place of the law of England."

"And the Jews are to have civil rights."

"And after that we may have a Jewish Sanhedrim in place of a Puritan Parliament."

"The good people of England will never bear such innovations," said Sir Thomas with great indignation.

"None of us know how much the good people of England will bear," answered Hollis.

"And pray what part does Cromwell take in these changes? Surely he is the leader of them?" asked Lady Jevery.

"He takes no part in them, madame," answered Walton; "gives no advice, uses no authority."

"Oh, indeed he is just waiting till his Assembly of Saints have made themselves beyond further bearing," said Matilda. "Then he will arise to the rescue, and serve them as he did the last Parliament."

"And then, Lady Matilda, what then?" asked Doctor Hewitt.

"He will make himself Emperor of these Isles."

"I do not think he has any such intent; no, not for an hour," said Sir Thomas.

There was a cynical laugh at this opinion, and Matilda's opinion was, in the main, not only endorsed, but firmly believed. Many could not understand why he had waited so long. "When he sheathed his sword at Worcester he could have lifted the sceptre, and the whole nation would have shouted gratefully, 'God save King Oliver,'" said Sir Thomas. "Why did he not do so, I wonder?"

But if the spiritual eyes of these men had been suddenly opened, as were those of Elisha, they might have seen that hour the man Cromwell, as God saw him, and acknowledged with shame and blame their ready injustice. For even while they were condemning him, accusing him of unbounded ambition and unbounded hypocrisy, he was kneeling by the side of a very old woman, praying. One of her small, shriveled hands was clasped between his large brown palms, and his voice, low, but intensely deep and earnest, filled the room with that unmistakable pathetic monotone, which is the natural voice of a soul pleading with its God. It rose and fell, it was full of tears and of triumph, it was sorrowful and imploring, it was the very sob of a soul wounded and loving, but crying out, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." When he rose, his face was wet with tears, but the aged woman had the light of heaven on her calm brow. She rose with him, and leaning on the top of her ivory staff, said,

"Oliver, my son Oliver, have no fear. Man nor woman shall have power to hurt thee. Until thy work is done, thou shalt not see death; and when it is done, the finger of God will beckon thee. Though an host should rise up against thee, thou wilt live thy day and do thy work."

"My mother! My good mother! God's best gift to me and mine."

"The Lord bless thee, Oliver, and keep thee.
The Lord make His face to shine upon thee,
And be gracious unto thee.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee,
And give thee peace."

Then Oliver kissed his mother tenderly, and went out from her presence with the joy of one whom "his mother comforteth." And his face was bright and lifted up, and his footsteps firm; and he carried himself like a man whose soul had been "ministered unto." And if the envious doubters at Sir Thomas Jevery's had seen him at that moment, they must have instantly taken knowledge of him that he had been with God. All his fears were gone, all his troubles lighter than a grasshopper; in some blessed way there had come to him the knowledge that even

"Envy's harsh berries, and the chocking pool,
Of the world's scorn and hatred, are the right mother milk
To the true, tough hearts that pioneer their kind."