ened, first
a little inch, then, slowly, wider and wider, allowing Charles Stuart
to see and hear. A curious smile reigned over the delicate face as
Brilliana made her proposal, and lingered in whimsical doubt for the
response.

The response came quickly. Again Evander was saying Brilliana nay.

"I cannot that, neither, dear woman, for to do this would be to make
you disloyal to your King."

"Oh, you split straws!" she cried, wildly. "A plague upon your
preciousness which drives you to deny and die rather than admit my
wisdom! You are no prisoner to the King. You are my prisoner. I took
you, I hold you, and as my prisoner I command you to follow me, that
I may convey you to some place of surety more pleasing to my mind
than this mansion."

From behind the door ajar there came a clap of hearty laughter which
made harassed maid and man jump more than if their discussion had
been interrupted by volleying musketry. The door was wide open now,
and the King was in the room, his face irradiated with honest mirth.

XXIX

THE KING MAKES A FRIEND

"Oh, good sir," he gasped, dabbing with his kerchief the merry tears
from his smiling eyes, "you had better do as this lady urges, for, by
St. George! she employs the most irresistible logic."

Evander and Brilliana, blown apart, as it were, by the breath of the
King's merriment, regarded the monarch with very different feelings.
Though he stood upon the edge of peril's precipice, at the threshold
of death's temple, Evander could not scrutinize without vivid and
conflicting emotions the face of the man because of whom the solid
realm of England seemed to be dissolving into anarchy. This was the
King of ship-money, the heart's-brother of Buckingham, the betrayer
of Strafford, the doer to death of Eliot, the would-be baffler of
free speech, the baffled hunter after the five members. To Brilliana
he was simply the King, not even the whole hero and half-martyr King
for whom she had held Loyalty House so sturdily, but simply the only
man living graced with power to save the man she loved. She turned to
him at once with a petulant expression of impatience.

"Your Majesty," she sighed, "I wish you would speak to this proud
gentleman. I cannot make him listen to reason."

The almost infantile simplicity of her address stirring the King to
renewed merriment, served her cause better, in its very
inappropriateness to the situation, than the most impassioned or the
most calcul