Augusta was the last prop of her declining creed; with tears of sorrow, not unmixed with anger, she beheld stronghold after stronghold of Rome's once mighty power surrender into the hands of the Philistines. More deeply still she lamented the stain in her own family, and bewailed the falling away of Ralph, the most valorous soldier of the cross in better days, now the servant of one she deemed an arch impostor and hypocrite; faithless to his name; doubly faithless to his king; and, worse than all, faithless to his religion! But Augusta's was one of those noble minds, which, while it hates the error, pities the erring, and by all the means in her power she strove to reclaim her apostate cousin. The Roman Pontiff had not only excommunicated him in this world, but condemned his forfeit soul to everlasting torments, whilst Augusta, like her Master, rather sought the wandering sheep, and ceased not night or day with tears and vigil to remember him in her prayers. Augusta was also a faithful partisan of the crownless Charles;--during all his wanderings, as far as was in her power, she provided him with food and raiment, and he had remained beneath her hospitable roof as long as prudence would permit him; and when he quitted his ungrateful country for more friendly shores till Fortune once more smiled on her favourite son, the Abbess, at the risk of her life, had herself attended him to the seaside, and blessed him ere he departed. It was little wonder that when this became known in London, Augusta brought down all the slumbering ire of Cromwell on her devoted head, and though nearly six years had passed away since she waved her hand to the fugitive king, he commissioned Sir Ralph de Vere to punish the haughty peeress. Sir Ralph was just the man to execute his cruel designs. In his bigoted hatred of Royalist and Catholic he even forgot how he was indebted to Augusta for his very life in days when he had fought on the side he now warred against, and was glad to avail himself of the sanctuary St. Clements afforded him. It was nothing that she was his near relative and he had sought her hand ere she had become the Bride of Heaven; she was a Catholic, "and he that loveth friend more than me," said the stern presbyterian, "is not worthy of me;" it was nothing that she was young and beautiful, so was Herodias' daughter; nothing that she was good and generous--she was a Royalist, and doomed! On the 26th of August, 1658, Sir Ralph appeared at the head of an army of fierce Puritans on the banks of the beautiful Wye. Autumn had stained the leaves red and yellow, and the golden sheaf still dotted many a field: the air was calm, the scene one of peace and security, soon to be one of bloodshed, rapine, and havoc!