"Unhood your hawk," Brilliana ordered. Thoroughgood, obedient, unpicked the knot of the handkerchief, revealing his companion's face. Brilliana observed with a hostile curiosity a tallish, well-set, comely man of about thirty years of age, whose smooth, well-featured face asserted high breeding and a gravity which deepened into melancholy in the dark expressive eyes and lightened into lines of humor about the fine, firm mouth. For a moment, with the removal of the muffle, he seemed dazzled by the change from dark to light; then, as command of his vision returned, he observed Brilliana and made her a courteous salutation which she returned coldly. She made a gesture of dismissal to Thoroughgood, who went out, and the Lady of Loyalty was left alone with her enemy. There was a moment's silence as the pair faced each other, the man quietly discreet, the woman openly scornful. She was under the same roof with a rebel in arms, and the thought sickened her. She broke the silence. "You petitioned to see me." With the sound of her voice she found new vehemence, new indignation. "Do your rebels offer unconditional surrender?" The circumstances of the astonishing question brought for the moment a slight smile to the grave face of the Parliament man. "It was scarcely with that thought," he answered, "that I sought for a parley." Though the man's smile had been short-lived, Brilliana had seen it and loathed him for it. Though the man's manner was suave, it seemed to wear the suavity of success and she loathed him for that, too. "We waste time," she cried, impatiently, "with any other business than your swift submission." Then as she saw him make an amiably protesting gesture she raged at him with a rising voice. "Oh, if you knew how hard it is for me to stand in the same room with a renegade traitor you would, if such as you remember courtesy, be brief in your errand." The man showed no consciousness of the insult in her words and in her manner save than by a courteous inclination of the head and a few words of quiet speech. "Much may be pardoned to so brave a lady." Brilliana struck her hand angrily upon the table once and again. "For God's sake do not praise me!" she almost screamed, "or I shall hate myself. Your errand, your errand, your errand!" The enemy was provokingly imperturbable. "You have a high spirit," he said, "that must compel admiration from all. That is why I would persuade you to wisdom. I came hither from Cambridge by order of Colonel Cromwell." Brilliana's lips tightened at the sound of the name which the envoy pronounced with so much reverence. "The rebel member for Cambridge," she sneered--"the mutinous brewer. Are you a vassal of the man of beer?" There was a quiet note of protest in the reply of the envoy. "Colonel Cromwell is not a brewer, though he would be no worse a man if he were. I am honored in his friendship, in his service. He is a great man and a great Englishman."