"Who can tell that? England had to come out of the Valley and Shadow of Popery, and it is the Lord General’s sword that shall lead her into the full light—there is something round your neck, Matilda, that looks as if you were still in darkness." Then Matilda laughed and put her hand to her throat, and slipped into her bosom a rosary of coral and gold beads. "It was my mother’s," she said; "you know that she was of the Old Profession, and I wear it for her sake." "It is said that Charles Stuart also wears one for his mother’s sake." "It is a good man that remembers a good mother; and the King is a good man." "There is no king in England now, Matilda, and no question of one." "There is a king, whether we will or no. The king never dies; the crown is the crown, though it hang on a hedge bush." "That is frivolous nonsense, Matilda. The Parliament is king." "Oh, the pious gang! This is a strange thing that has come to pass in our day, Jane—that an anointed king should be deposed and slain. Who ever heard the like?" "Read your histories, Matilda. It is a common thing for tyrannical kings to have their executioners. Charles Stuart suffered lawfully and by consent of Parliament." "A most astonishing difference!" answered Matilda, drawing on her gloves impatiently, "to be murdered with consent of Parliament! that is lawful; without consent of Parliament, that is very wicked indeed. But even as a man you might pity him." "Pity him! Not I! He has his just reward. He bound himself for his enemies with cords of his own spinning. But you will not see the truth, Matilda——" "So then, it is useless wasting good Puritan breath on me. Dear Jane, can we never escape this subject? Here, in this sweet room, why do we talk of tragedies?" Jane was closing the still-room door as this question was asked, and she took her friend by the arm and said, "Come, and I will show you a room in which another weak, wicked king prefigured the calamity that came to his successor in our day." Then she opened a door in the same tower, and they were in a chamber that was, even on this warm harvest day, cold and dark. For the narrow loophole window had not been changed, as in the still-room, for wide lattices; and the place was mouldy and empty and pervaded by an old, unhappy atmosphere. "What a wretched room! It will give me an ague," said Matilda. "It was to this room King John came, soon after his barons had compelled him to sign the Great Charter of Liberties. And John was only an earlier Charles Stuart—just as tyrannical—just as false—and his barons were his parliament. He lay on the floor where you are now standing, and in his passion bit and gnawed the green rushes with which it was strewed, and cursed the men who he said had ’made themselves twenty-four over-kings.’ So you see that it is not a new thing for Englishmen to war against their kings." "Poor kings!" "They should behave themselves better."