"Of what avail?" she said. "You are taking the king to London to die. The greatest crime and curse is about to fall on the nation, and you will go and share and sanction it, and make it your own. No word of mine will move you--how can word of yours comfort me? You will, if you are commanded by him you have chosen for your priest and king, keep guard by the scaffold while the king is murdered. Did not you tell me so two hours since? Did not I entreat and implore and tell you you were digging a gulf, not only, between me and you, but between you and heaven?" He stood for a few moments silent and motionless, and then he said: "And did I not tell you, that, as a soldier I could do no otherwise unless I deserted my chief, nor as a patriot unless I betrayed my country? It is the king who has betrayed us, Lettice; who has refused to let us save him and trust him. The hand that could have stopped all the oppression and injustice at the source--from the beginning--and _did not_, must be the guiltiest hand of all. It is _falsehood_ that is leading the king to this end, not the country, nor the Parliament, nor General Cromwell." At last she looked up,--"Do not try to persuade me, Roger," she said, "God knows I am too willing to be persuaded. I cannot reason about it any more than about loving my Mother or obeying my Father. I dare not listen to you. I am untrue," she added, bursting at length into passionate tears, "I have been a traitor, to let my Mother be deceived--to let her thank God for what can never be!" "Lettice," he said in a tone of anguish, "if you reproach yourself, if you call yourself a traitor, what am I?" "You are as true as the Gospel, Roger," she said, her sobs subsiding into quiet weeping; "as true as heaven itself. You would never have done what I did. You would break your own heart and every one's rather than utter or act one falsehood, or neglect one thing you believe to be duty. That is what makes it so terrible." His voice trembled as he replied,--"You trust me, and yet you think me capable of a terrible crime." "I know that to lay sacrilegious hands on the king is an unspeakable crime," said she; "but to trust you is no choice of mine. I cannot tear the trust of my heart from you if I would, Roger, and God knows I would not if I could." A light of almost triumphant joy passed over his face, as, standing erect before her, with folded arms, he looked on her down-cast face,-- "Then the time must come when a delusion that cannot separate us in heart can no longer separate us in life," he said, in tones scarcely audible. "Your Mother said the truth, Lettice, when she joined our hands. Such words from her lips at such a time are surely prophecy." Lettice shook her head. "My Mother saw beyond this world," she said, mournfully; "where there are no delusions, and no divisions, and no partings." He bent before her for an instant, and pressed her hand to his lips. And so they parted.