In another moment my messenger and guide came out to the anteroom, threw open the door, and motioned me to proceed. Summoning my courage, I stepped through the doorway. The door was closed behind me immediately, and I found myself in a vast vaulted room, a library apparently. On a high chair at the head of a large table sat the King. I knew him at once. To his left there was a man in the robes of a Bishop of the Church, a man of kindly, benignant, gentle, merciful face, so different in his aspect from the man who sat on the other side of the King that his good heart, which would have been evident anywhere, was the more marked by contrast. The other man wore the dress of a cavalier, but he had thrown over it the robe of a justice. His face was handsome but marred by the most brutal, cruel, and licentious expression. His eyes stared at me and his look was an insult. On the hither side of the table an elderly but gallant soldier of foreign aspect in the rich uniform of a general officer waited. Next to the Bishop's his was the pleasantest countenance that I fronted. Pride, haughtiness, cruelty, covetousness were evidenced in the King's face, but by the side of the man next to him, he almost looked like an angel of light. I surveyed the four with lightning-like rapidity. I was fighting for life, my father's life, Sir Hugh Richmond's life, and I almost felt in that baleful royal presence for my own honour as well, and I must take stock of my enemies or friends. "The King, madam!" cried the soldier, inclining his head toward His Majesty as I advanced. I sank to my knees instantly and stretched out my hands. "Your Majesty," I pleaded, "mercy!" "Rise, madam," said the King. "Nay, stand you there," he added quickly as I rose and made a sudden movement toward him, "by the Earl of Feversham." I glanced rapidly at the soldier. So this was Louis de Duras, the French soldier of fortune, the favourite of the King, the commander of his armies, the hero of Sedgemoor. This was the commander who had dashed all of Monmouth's hopes. It was the Bishop who spoke. "Your Majesty, the young woman looks weary. Will not your grace permit her the privilege of a chair?" "Ay," said the King indifferently, "she may be seated, if she will." "I would make the rebel stand," growled the man upon the other side under his breath while the Earl of Feversham courteously handed me a chair. "I' faith you have made many of them stand upon nothing, Jeffreys," laughed the King uproariously. So that was Jeffreys, he of the Bloody Assize, the greatest disgrace to justice that ever had been seen in all England. He had hanged and burned and beaten and scourged and robbed and murdered without let or hindrance after Sedgemoor, and writ his name in such gory letters upon the pages of history that not all the waters of all the oceans could ever wash him clean, or wash out his damnable record. I looked upon him and I hated him.