“Hush! Look on these white hairs, sign among so many that life has done with me. Nay, I know full well I am not old in years, scarce double thine own; but the vital spring is dying. Listen, Harry, you are a man; I have a trust to lay upon you. Since that terrible dawn, when, crying out, ‘Diana’s dead!’ you fell, bleeding of your old wound, into swoon upon swoon, and thereafter into mortal sickness, you know her name has never passed your lips nor mine. It was better, in sooth, you should believe her dead.” The young man caught at the parapet behind him for support; and the sweat broke on the father’s brow as he looked at him. There was a tense silence. Then, fiercely, Harry Rockhurst said:— “Now, my lord, you must speak!” * * * * * A moment longer Rockhurst kept silence. Curious reversal of the wheel of fate! Here stood he, who had always been as a god to his son, now as one in the dock before his judge. He, Rockhurst, whose will the King himself could not bend, ordered to speech; and because of his own just mind, just through all injustice wrought, unresentful—aye, submissive. The moment of agony of a little while ago had passed. Already it seemed to him the things of life were receding so quickly that he looked on them from afar. Passion had gone from his voice as he spoke; only a mighty sadness was left. “It was even to speak, Harry, that I kept thee by me here. Know, then, that until the night of Lady Chillingburgh’s death,—the night which found Diana without a shelter,—in my daily intercourse with your promised bride the father was ever stronger in me than the man. Aye, and when her brother fled from the plague-stricken house and there was none but me to protect her (for her kinsman Lionel was, as thou hast good cause to know, my poor wounded boy, no guardian for thy bride) ’twas as a father I cared for her all through the livelong night as we wandered, vainly seeking a refuge. I brought her at length to my house, and went forth to seek the means of conveying her home. That was even the very morning of your arrival. Alack, nor horse nor man could fugitive then find in the waste of the doomed city! I came back to her.… Oh, my son, before you judge me, remember: men knew not what they did those terrible days. Question any who passed through them. Staid citizens became drunken reprobates, greybeards rioted horribly with the madness of youth, priests denied their God—” “But Diana, Diana—”