rength.

As he sat over his fire with his men whispering behind him, planning as
they thought new assaults on the rich nests that they all hated and
coveted together, again and again it was Beatrice's face, and not that
of a shrewd or anxious monk, that burned in the red heart of the hearth.
He had seen it with downcast eyes, with the long lashes lying on the
cheek, and the curved red lips discreetly shut beneath; the masses of
black hair shadowed the forehead and darkened the secret that he wished
to read. Or he had watched her, like a jewel in a pig-sty, looking
across the foul-littered farm where he had had to sleep more than once
with his men about him; her black eyes looking into his own with tender
gravity, and her mouth trembling with speech. Or best of all, as he rode
along the bitter cold lanes at the fall of the day, the crowding yews
above him had parted and let her stand there, with her long skirts
rustling in the dry leaves, her slender figure blending with the
darkness, and her sweet face trusting and loving him out of the gloom.

And then again, like the prick of a wound, the question had touched him,
how would she receive him when he came back with the monastic spoils on
his beasts' shoulders, and the wail of the nuns shrilling like the wind
behind?

But by the time that he came back to London he had thought out his
method of meeting her. Probably she had had news of the doings of the
Visitors, perhaps of his own in particular; it was hardly possible that
his father had not written; she would ask for an explanation, and she
should have instead an appeal to her confidence. He would tell her that
sad things had indeed happened, that he had been forced to be present at
and even to carry out incidents which he deplored; but that he had done
his utmost to be merciful. It was rough work, he would say; but it was
work that had to be done; and since that was so--and this was Cromwell's
teaching--it was better that honourable gentlemen should do it. He had
not been able always to restrain the violence of his men--and for that
he needed forgiveness from her dear lips; and it would be easy enough to
tell stories against him that it would be hard to disprove; but if she
loved and trusted him, and he knew that she did, let her take his word
for it that no injustice had been deliberately done, that on the other
hand he had been the means under God of restraining many such acts, and
that his conscience was clear.