In June of that year two women sat together in an upper room of a humble, though decent, house in London, near the Abbey of Westminster and the Hall where the Parliament was now sitting.

This was a back street, crooked and obscure; never as yet had it been touched nor disturbed by the clamours and tumults which of late had risen and fallen through the broad ways of London like the tempestuous rising and falling of the winter sea.

In the little garden stood a lime tree, now in full leaf, and the sun, striking through the branches, filled the room with a soft greenish light, and in and out the boughs and sometimes in and out of the open window a white butterfly fluttered.

The two women sat near the window and talked together in low voices.

One was in her prime but spoilt by sorrow and sickness, her blonde hair mixed with grey as if dust had been sprinkled upon it, her face peaked and thin, her lids heavy, her eyes dimmed; the other little beyond girlhood, but she too disfigured by suffering, and nothing remaining to her of the pleasant beauty of youth save the flowing richness of her red-gold curls.

Both were simply, even humbly, clad, in heavy mourning.

The younger, after a pause of silence during which both gazed out at the sun among the green with eyes that no longer kindled to such a sight, remarked—

"Bridget Cromwell is married to-day."

"Yes," replied the other; "they say it is a sure sign of a general peace."

The young gentlewoman made no reply to this remark, but glanced down at the wedding-ring on her fair thin hand.

"I wonder," she cried fiercely, "if she is as happy as I was when I was a bride. I wonder if she will ever come to be as unhappy as I am now!"

Lady Strafford did not reply, and her companion, with the tears smarting up into eyes already worn with weeping, continued—

"I could find it in my heart to wish that the rebel's daughter might find herself, at my years, a childless widow!"

"Hush, Jane," said the Countess; "this is not charity!"

"The times," replied Lady William Pawlet, "do not teach charity. Thou art nobly patient, but I have not yet learnt to hush my railing. All, all gone and an empty life! Madonna! how can one support the burden! Oh, to be a man and go forward in the front ranks to die as Lord Falkland did! But to be a woman—a woman who must wait till she die of remembering!"

"There is no answer to be made—none," said the Countess; "the heart knoweth its own bitterness."

"And we sit here in poverty, bereaved and desolate, and Oliver Cromwell hath my Lord Worchester's estates and the thanks of Parliament," continued Lady William, following out thoughts too bitter to be kept silent. "Loyalty now must go barefoot and impudent knavery swell in high places! I will go abroad to the Queen in Paris—she too is desolate and maybe can employ me about her person, for I will no longer be a charge on you, madam. Will you not," she added, in a more timid tone, "come too?"

"I will not, willingly," replied the elder lady firmly, "ever see Her Majesty again. Nor yet the King. Thank God I can keep my loyalty and wish His Majesty a safe deliverance from all his present perils, but this I know, that were he to taste the bitterest death and she the bitterest widowhood, both, in the extreme hour of their misery, could endure no greater torment than to remember Lord Strafford and how he died."

She spoke quietly without raised voice or flushed cheek, yet so intensely, that Jane Pawlet, who had never heard her mention this subject before, was horrified and awed.

"The world is upside down, I think," she murmured. "It all seems to me so unreal—I doubt it can be more strange in hell."

"You are young," replied the Countess, "and may live to think of all this as a clouded dream. But my life is over."

"You have been the wife of a great man," cried Lady William Pawlet, "and you have children."

"Whom I must see grow up as landless exiles, bearing an attainted name," said Lady Strafford, with a stern smile.

"But you have fulfilled yourself," returned the other, "while I have been, and am, useless. Ah me, how differently I dreamed it!"

Then the poor widow, overwhelmed by recollections of a happiness which now seemed the doubly dazzling because it had been so brief, rose to conceal her emotion, and moved restlessly round the room.

Lady Strafford glanced at her and, with an effort to distract her mind, touched on another subject.

"I had a letter from Margaret Lucas in Paris—so ill spelt I can hardly read it; but it seems the Marquess of Newcastle hath come to St. Germains and that they are reading each other's poetry—so belike there will be a match there."

"Ah yes?" said Lady William heavily.

"They have both lost their estates," continued the Countess, "so it will be a fair trial of their love and constancy."

As she spoke there was a light, almost uncertain knock on the door.

Lady Strafford, who, in her narrow circumstances, kept no servant, looked from the window cautiously.

"It is my brother," she said, and the younger lady at once left the room, soon returning accompanied by Sir Denzil Holles.

This gentleman had always been of a contrary party to the Earl of Strafford, and in the first part of his life had seen but little of his magnificent sister. He had, however, done his utmost to save the Earl's life, and was now almost the principle support of the Countess and her children.

He was not in arms for Parliament (though he had been one of the famous five members), and, being estranged from the army by the fact of his Presbyterian religion, and animated by a great dislike of Oliver Cromwell, he stood as much aloof as he was able from the clashes of the times, though he led a considerable party in the Commons.

"Any news?" asked his sister, after greeting him affectionately.

"The usual," replied Sir Denzil gloomily. "Oxford surrendered—the princes and Sir Ralph Hopton are gone beyond seas—Sir Jacob Astley with the last force of royalists hath been taken—and Bridget Cromwell is now Bridget Ireton."

"The King's cause, then," said the Countess, "is utterly lost and ruined?"

"As far as it can be maintained by arms, it is," replied her brother, who, though he had been imprisoned by King Charles, showed no great elation at his downfall. "And as it is certain he will not take the Covenant—why, you may take it it is altogether ruined."

"He will not?" asked Lady William Pawlet.

"Nay, though they have entreated him on their knees, with tears—as have we, the Presbyterians—and if he will not take it, there is not a single Scot will shoulder a musket for him."

"It seems," remarked the Countess quietly, "that the King can be faithful to some things."

"Ay," said Sir Denzil, "to the Church of England and his Crown. I believe he would resign life itself sooner than either."

"Therefore if the Scots will not fight there is an end of the war?" said his sister. "Well, Denzil, what shall we do?"

"Get beyond seas, unless I can put down the army," he replied. "This is no longer a country for such as I. The King is overcome—but in his place is like to be a worse tyrant."

"You mean Oliver Cromwell?"

"Yes," said Denzil Holles bitterly. "That man is now the front of all things—he hath the army at his back and groweth bigger every day."

"The talk is," said his sister, "that he would make accommodation with the King, whereas many of his party are for measures the most extreme, even for setting up a Republic—so it is said—but I know not. What does one hear but echoes of echoes in a retirement such as this?"

"It matters not," replied Sir Denzil, "things are all ajar in England. I have a mind to Holland to a little quiet, some books, a few friends—Ralph Hopton is at the Hague. I can be no use in this whirligig, and I will save what little credit, what little fortune, I have left."

He had often spoken so before, but had always been drawn back to the whirlpool at Westminster, and his sister believed that he would be so again.

Lady William Pawlet had listened wearily to this conversation between brother and sister. Her personal anguish had dimmed all politics for her; the rebels were now to her simply her husband's murderers, the royalists the party for whom he died. More important to her than the ultimate fate of King and Parliament was the memory of the morning of Naseby when she had knotted Sir William's scarf over his cuirass and hung a little silver saint round his neck as a charm against evil. She watched the white butterfly which fluttered in the upper branches of the lime, and thought of the legend of the Ancients which chose this insect, for its light purity and because of the hideous creature from which it came, as an emblem of the soul; and she wondered if her lord's soul was hovering somewhere beneath heaven, watching her, or if he was already in the Fields of Paradise. Her chief consolation remained that he had been confessed and absolved before he went to the battle....

"Well, well," said Lady Strafford, "London is no place for me—every paving-stone hath a memory.... And you, child, will you go to Paris?"

"Yes, madam, to the Queen, who was always a good friend to me. We have the same faith, as you know."

"The noble family of Pawlet," remarked Sir Denzil gracefully, "have a great claim on the house of Stewart. The defence of Basing was one of the noblest actions of this unhappy war."

"The Marquess lost everything," said Lady William Pawlet. "Even the bricks were pulled down and sold—even my lord's shirts—and his bedchamber invaded by the vulgar, who burnt all the tapestry there for the sake of the gold threads in it, and they were the most beautiful hangings in England. What is loyalty's reward? Bitter, I fear, bitter."

She glanced out of the window at the unchanging sunshine as if it hurt her eyes, then moved away again restlessly round the room.

The Countess made an effort to stir a silence that was so full of memories, of regrets, of disappointments.

"Well," she said, "the war is over and we shall go abroad; but what will happen in England?"

"That," replied Sir Denzil sternly, "is very much in the hands of Oliver Cromwell."