He had warned her not to scream, but now his own cries filled the room as he staggered back, his hands to his face. Yet, grievously wounded as he was, he seemed resolved she should not escape him, and, after the first shock, groped blindly for her. She flung the broken weapon to the further side of the room, and the noise of its fall turned him thither, striking against the table, and then against a chair. She tip-toed cautiously to the door, turned the key, and threw it open before he could recover himself, for he had lost all sense of direction and could see nothing. She took the immediate risk of drawing the key from the door, to ward off the greater danger of pursuit, and calmly locked him in. If screams were as ineffectual as he had insisted, he would take little good from his battering of the door for some time to come. Frances now threaded her way through the maze of passages, meeting no one, for the gloom of death pervaded the palace, at least in the direction she had taken. She dared not hurry, in spite of the urging of her quickly beating heart, but must proceed leisurely, as if she had a perfect right to be where she was, should any inquisitive servant encounter her. At last, with a deep breath, she emerged upon the great courtyard and so came to the gate. The officer bowed to her, and she paused for a moment to thank him for his kindness to her in the earlier part of the day. “Is it true--that--that Lord Strafford----” She could get no further. “Yes, my lady, and grieved we all are that it should be so. This morning on Tower Hill. The Lords refused a reprieve even until Saturday.” Frances bent her head and struggled with herself to repress undue emotion, but, finding that impossible, turned abruptly and walked fast down Whitehall. “Her bright eyes, bless her!” said the officer to a comrade, “are not the only ones dimmed with tears for this morning’s work.” On reaching the inn Frances thought of waiting for the faithful Vollins, but she had not the heart to meet him, nor the inclination to rest another night in the city now so hateful to her. She wrote a letter which was forwarded to him by a messenger, but said nothing of her visit to Whitehall, telling him his estimate of De Courcy had been correct, promising to send the thousand pounds to be replaced in her father’s treasury as soon as she reached her home in the North, and asking pardon that his counsel had been declined. Two hours later Frances was on her way to the North. She paused on Highgate Hill and looked back on the Babel she had left, vast and dim in the rising mist of the mild spring evening. “Oh, cruel city! Oh, faithless man! The bloodthirst of London may be whetted and not quenched, perjured King of England!” She bowed her head to her horse’s mane and wept helplessly. BOOK II.--THE MAN. CHAPTER I.--COINCIDENCE.