The next moment they were in a brilliantly lighted room. Mr. and Mrs. Claypole, and Mr. and Mrs. Richard Cromwell, and Doctor John Owen, and Mr. Milton, and Doctor Verity were grouped around her Highness the Protector’s handsome wife. And she was taking their homage as naturally as she had been used to take attention in her simple home in Ely, being more troubled about the proper serving of dinner than about her own dignity. She sat at the Protector’s right hand, and Jane Swaffham sat at his left. "The great men must scatter themselves, Jane," he said; "my daughter Dorothy Cromwell wants to be near Mr. Milton, and Lady Claypole will have none but Doctor Owen, and one way or another, you will have to be content with my company," and he laid her hand under his hand, and smiled down into her face with a fatherly affection. He was in an unusually happy mood, and Doctor Owen remarking it, Admiral Blake said, "They had been mobbed—mobbed by women—and the Protector had the best of it, and that was a thing to pleasure any man." Then Mrs. Cromwell laughed and said, "Your Highness must tell us all now, or we shall be very discontented. Where were you, to meet a mob of women?" "We were in London streets, somewhere near the waterside. Blake was with me, and Blake is going to Portsmouth to take command of an expedition." "Where to?" asked Mrs. Claypole. "Well, Elizabeth, that is precisely the question this mob of women wanted me to answer. You are as bad as they were. But they had some excuse." "Pray what excuse, sir, that I have not?"