cruel fate that had cast her lot in such an unquiet age.
Instead of wearing her coronet at Court, here she was moping and mewed
up in a stiff, puritanical countryside.

After the triumph of the Parliamentarians, things grew worse. It would
have gone hard with the young couple had not a neighbour of theirs, of
much influence with the Protector, one Justice Hotham, made
representations as to the young lord's dying state and so ensured
their being left unmolested.

Justice Hotham was a fatherly old man with a genius for understanding
his neighbours, especially young people. He was a good friend to
Joyce, and perpetually urged her to cherish her husband while he
remained with her. Judge then of the good Justice's distress, when,
one fine day, a note was brought to him from his wilful neighbour to
say that she could bear her lot no longer, that her dear friend
Abigail, Lady Darcy, was now on her way to join the Queen in France,
and had persuaded Joyce to leave her husband and accompany her
thither.

The Justice looked up in dismay: a dismay reflected on the face of the
waiting-woman to whom Joyce had entrusted her confidential letter.
This was a certain blue-eyed Cecily, now a tall and comely maiden, who
had followed her mistress from her old home at Drayton-in-the-Clay.

'She must be stopped,' said the good Judge. 'Spending the night with
Lady Darcy at the Inn at Beverley is she, sayest thou? And thou art to
join her there? Hie thee after her then, and delay her at all costs.
Plague on this gouty foot that ties me here! Maiden, I trust in thee
to bring her home.'

Cecily needed no second bidding. 'She will not heed me. No mortal man
or woman can hinder my lady, once her mind is made up. Still I will do
my best,' was her only answer to the Judge; while 'It would take an
angel to stop her! May Heaven find one to do the work and send her
home, or ever my lord finds out that she has forsaken him,' she prayed
in the depths of her faithful heart.

Was it in answer to her prayer that the rain came down in such
torrents that for two days the roads were impassable? Cecily was
inclined to think so. Anyhow, Joyce and Abigail, growing tired of the
stuffy inn parlour while the torrents descended, and having nothing to
do, seeing that the day was the Sabbath, and therefore scrupulously
observed without doors in Puritan Beverley, strolled through the
Minster, meaning to make sport of the congregation and its ways
thereafter. The