“Welcome to Flanders!” she said. “You have fled from that accursed country where our Church is despised and persecuted——” “Nay, reverend kinswoman, I have fled but to go back again as fast as horses and sails can carry me. While the fortunes of my King are at stake, my place is in England, or it may be in Scotland, where there are still those who are ready to fight to the death in the royal cause. But I have brought this little one for shelter and safe keeping, and tender usage, trusting in you who are of kin to her as I could trust no one else—and, furthermore, that she may be reared in the faith of her dead mother.” “Sweet soul!” murmured the nun. “It was well for her to be taken from your troubled England to the kingdom of the saints and martyrs.” “True, reverend mother; yet those blasphemous levellers who call us ‘Malignants’ have dubbed themselves ‘Saints.’” “Then affairs go no better with you in England, I fear, Sir John?” “Nay, madam, they go so ill that they have reached the lowest depth of infamy. Hell itself hath seen no spectacle more awful, no murder more barbarous, no horrider triumph of wickedness, than the crime which was perpetrated this day se’nnight at Whitehall.” The nun looked at him wistfully, with clasped hands, as one who half apprehended his meaning. “The King!” she faltered, “still a prisoner?” “Ay, reverend lady, but a prisoner in Paradise, where angels are his guards, and saints and martyrs his companions. He has regained his crown; but it is the crown of martyrdom, the aureole of slaughtered saints. England, our little England that was once so great under the strong rule of that virgin-queen who made herself the arbiter of Christendom, and the wonder of the world——” The pious lady shivered and crossed herself at this praise of the heretic queen—praise that could only come from a heretic. “Our blessed and peaceful England has become a den of thieves, given over to the ravening wolves of rebellion and dissent, the penniless soldiery who would bring down all men’s fortunes to their own level, seize all, eat and drink all, and trample crown and peerage in the mire. They have slain him, reverend mother, this impious herd—they gave him the mockery of a trial—just as his Master, Christ, was mocked. They spurned and spat upon him, even as our Redeemer was spurned; and then, on the Sabbath day, they cried aloud in their conventicles, ‘Lord, hast Thou not smelt a sweet savour of blood?’ Ay, these murderers gloried in their crime, bragged of their gory hands, lifted them up towards heaven as a token of righteousness!” The cavalier was pacing to and fro in the dimness of the convent parlour, with quick, agitated steps, his nostrils quivering, grizzled brows bent over angry eyes, his hand trembling with rage as it clutched his sword-hilt. The reverend mother drew Angela to her side, took off the little black silk hood, and laid her hand caressingly on the soft brown hair. “Was it Cromwell’s work?” she asked.