It was eight o’clock in the evening. In an apartment, far remote from that chamber of Lisle’s spacious but sombre-looking dwelling, which held the person of the royal prisoner, were assembled the wedding guests. As much festivity and ornament had been called to grace the occasion as was consistent with Lisle’s Puritanic views, yet the whole seemed by far too little to celebrate the marriage of the lovely divinity for whom it was prepared. The apartment was in the Elizabethan style of architecture, but devoid of those ornaments of luxurious taste, which, in the reign of Charles I. graced the houses of the opulent and distinguished of the Church of England. A quaint stiffness reigned throughout the furniture and other arrangements. Rows of high-backed chairs, interrupted here and there with a book-case, table, or other heavy piece of mahogany, stood in prim regularity against the wall; tall candlesticks, containing taller candles, cast their blue light from the mantel-piece, and a large Bible, laid open upon the table, was calculated to infuse devotional or religious sentiments into those mirthful feelings belonging to the occasion. No branches of mistletoe or holly hung around the room remained as suggestions of the recent Christmas; no superb and glittering chandelier shed its soft flood of light upon the assembly; no damask drapery or luxurious sofas gave an air of elegance and comfort to the spacious dreariness of the apartment; no music was prepared for the enlivenment of the evening; nor were any profane amusements that night to invoke the judgments of Heaven upon the approaching ceremony. The company consisted of more than two hundred guests, gentlemen and ladies, all staunch Puritans, and opposers of the king. The countenances of many of the male portion of these were recognisable as the same which had, for the last few days, appeared as the arraigners at the trial so speedily about to be terminated, and a certain peculiar expression, common to each, betokening a mind preoccupied by one deeply engrossing topic, might have enabled an uninformed observer readily to select them from the rest. Yet there were others present to whom the affair alluded to was not less momentous, and with whom rested fully as much of the responsibility of its now almost certainly dark result.