Joscelyn saw the look of almost intolerable pain in his face, and instantly knew that this must be Mistress Hilary. But for a moment it seemed that her lover could not speak. “Sir!” exclaimed the girl, indignantly, “let me pass.” Only too well she knew that old gesture of his, when, with head thrown back, he seemed to wrestle with words which would not be uttered. Only too well she knew, moreover, the low, passion-choked voice, in which at length he spoke. “You cannot go that way,” he said. “There is a noisy crowd of men near the west front.” “Cannot!” she said, contemptuously. “Do you think I care for a few rebels and traitors?” By this time he had mastered himself, and in his manner there was all the force which is gained by self-repression. “You had better go out by the other door and through the Palace,” he said. “I shall do no such thing,” she replied perversely. “I shall go the way I choose, and see what these comrades of yours are like. Let me pass, sir.” “I cannot let you go alone,” he said. “If you insist on going through the crowd, I shall attend you to your door.” The quiet determination of his tone almost maddened her. “And I utterly refuse your escort,” she said, with an angry scorn that cut him to the heart. “Rather than walk with you I would have as escort any other man in Hereford.” “Then I will present to you my friend, Captain Heyworth,” said Gabriel, steadily, but with an irrepressible note of pain in his voice. “Joscelyn, do me the favour of attending Mistress Hilary Unett to her home.” Joscelyn saluted her gravely. She longed to decline his company, but something in Gabriel’s tone made refusal impossible. She gave him one last glance, half from defiance, half from curiosity. What was it that still gave him his power over her? Physically he lacked the height and the fine physique of his friend, mentally she felt that she was more than his match, yet in moral and spiritual force he would always, as she well knew, tower above her. Was it fair that he, a traitor, as she honestly deemed him, both to Church and King, should yet live, as it were, on the heights? The thought stung and irritated her, and so did the unfading picture she carried away with her of that well-known parvise porch, and Gabriel standing just beneath the finely-moulded archway, his hazel eyes full of dumb suffering, his face sad but resolute, and lit up by a radiance which seemed to her, not of this earth at all. However, her musings were quickly put to flight by the bawling of the fanatic near the west front, whose violent tirade against what he alternately termed, “this House of Dagon,” and “this den of thieves crammed with popish idols,” made her lip curl scornfully. “These are your comrades!” she said, with bitter contempt.