With an angry wave of the hand Cromwell walked heavily from the room. Some touch of shame came to the young man’s cold heart, and he spoke to his father as the officers were about to lead him away. “I have been wrong, I have misunderstood you, sir,” he said, and he seemed about to hold out his hand. But it was too late. The old man turned on him, shaking his shaggy head. “Never, sir, while I live. The wrong to me is little. I can take my broken life into a foreign land and die dishonoured and forgotten. But my other child, my one dear child who has suffered year after year with me--for the wrong you have done her, I never, never, never will forgive you. Not for love of you have I spoken as I did to-day, but for the honour of the Enderbys and because you were the child of your mother.” Two days later at Southampton the old man boarded a little packet-boat bound for Havre. III The years went by again. At last all was changed in England. The monarchy was restored, and the land was smiling and content. One day there was a private reading in the Queen’s chamber of the palace. The voice of the reader moved in pleasant yet vibrant modulations: “The King was now come to a time when his enemies wickedly began to plot against him secretly and to oppose him in his purposes; which, in his own mind, were beneficent and magnanimous. From the shire where his labours had been most unselfish came the first malignant insult to his person and the first peril to his life, prefiguring the hellish plots and violence which drove him to his august martyrdom--” The King had entered quietly as the lady-in-waiting read this passage to the Queen, and, attracted by her voice, continued to listen, signifying to the Queen, by a gesture, that she and her ladies were not to rise. This was in the time when Charles was yet devoted to his Princess of Portugal, and while she was yet happy and undisturbed by rumours--or assurances--of her Lord’s wandering affections. “And what shire was that?” asked the King at that point where the chronicler spoke of his royal father’s “august martyrdom.” “The shire of Lincoln, your Majesty,” said the young lady who read, flushing. Then she rose from her footstool at the Queen’s feet, and made the King an elaborate courtesy. Charles waved a gentle and playful gesture of dissent from her extreme formality, and, with a look of admiration, continued: “My Lord Rippingdale should know somewhat of that ‘first violence’ of which you have read, Mistress Falkingham. He is of Lincolnshire.” “He knows all, your Majesty; he was present at that ‘first violence.’” “It would be amusing for Rippingdale to hear these records--my Lord Clarendon’s, are they not? Ah--not in the formal copy of his work? And by order of my Lord Rippingdale? Indeed! And wherefore, my Lord Rippingdale?”