they were insolent to me just now. Why do you not pay the
girl's arrears to-day?"

"Why do I not climb up to the moon, my dear Editha, and bring down a
few stars with me in my descent," he replied with a shrug of his broad
shoulders. "I have come to my last shilling."

"The Earl of Northallerton cannot live for ever."

"He hath vowed, I believe, that he would do it, if only to spite me. And
by the time that he come to die this accursed Commonwealth will have
abolished all titles and confiscated every estate."

"Hush, Marmaduke," she said, casting a quick, furtive look all round
her, "there may be spies about."

"Nay, I care not," he rejoined roughly, jumping to his feet and kicking
the chair aside so that it struck with a loud crash against the flagged
floor. "'Tis but little good a man gets for cleaving loyally to the
Commonwealth. The sequestrated estates of the Royalists would have been
distributed among the adherents of republicanism, and not held to
bolster up a military dictatorship. Bah!" he continued, allowing his
temper to overmaster him, speaking in harsh tones and with many a
violent oath, "it had been wiser to embrace the Royal cause. The Lord
Protector is sick, so 'tis said. His son Richard hath no backbone, and
the present tyranny is worse than the last. I cannot collect my rents; I
have been given neither reward nor compensation for the help I gave in
'46. So much for their boasted gratitude and their many promises! My
Lord Protector feasts the Dutch ambassadors with music and with wine, my
Lords Ireton and Fairfax and Hutchinson and the accursed lot of canting
Puritans flaunt it in silks and satins, whilst I go about in a ragged
doublet and with holes in my shoes."

"There's Lady Sue," murmured Mistress de Chavasse soothingly.

"Pshaw! the guardianship of a girl who comes of age in three months!"

"You can get another by that time."

"Not I. I am not a sycophant hanging round White Hall! 'Twas sheer good
luck and no merit of mine that got me the guardianship of Sue. Lord
Middlesborough, her kinsman, wanted it; the Courts would have given her
to him, but old Noll thought him too much of a 'gentleman,' whilst I--an
out-at-elbows country squire, was more to my Lord Protector's liking.
'Tis the only thing he ever did for me."

There was intense bitterness and a harsh vein of sarcasm running through
Sir Marmaduke's talk. It was the speech of a disappointed man, who had
hoped, and striven, and fough