ouncil-room,
crying out that he had been deceived, and adding many gross details for
the benefit of his friends.

Cromwell had been strangely moody ever since. Ralph had watched his
heavy face day after day staring vacantly across the room, and his hand
that held the pen dig and prick at the paper beneath it.

Even that was not all. The Anglo-German alliance had provoked opposition
on the continent instead of quelling it; and Ralph saw more than one
threatening piece of news from abroad that hinted at a probable invasion
of England should Cromwell's schemes take effect. These too, however,
had proved deceptive, and the Lutheran princes whom he had desired to
conciliate were even already beginning to draw back from the
consequences of their action.

Ralph was in Cromwell's room one day towards the end of January, when a
courier arrived with despatches from an agent who had been following the
Spanish Emperor's pacific progress through France, undertaken as a kind
of demonstration against England.

Cromwell tore open the papers, and glanced at them, running his quick
attentive eye over this page and that; and Ralph saw his face grow stern
and white. He tossed the papers on to the table, and nodded to the
courier to leave the room.

Then he took up a pen, examined it; dashed it point down against the
table; gnawed his nails a moment, and then caught Ralph's eye.

"We are failing," he said abruptly. "Mr. Torridon, if you are a rat you
had better run."

"I shall not run, sir," said Ralph.

"God's Body!" said his master, "we shall all run together, I think;--but
not yet."

Then he took up the papers again, and began to read.

It was a few days later that Ralph received the news of his mother's
illness.

She had written to him occasionally, telling him of his father's
tiresome ways, his brother's arrogance, his sister's feeble piety, and
finally she had told him of Beatrice's arrival.

"I consented very gladly," she had written, "for I thought to teach my
lady a lesson or two; but I find her very pert and obstinate. I do not
understand, my dear son, how you could have wished to make her your
wife; and yet I will grant that she has a taking way with her; she seems
to fear nothing but her own superstitions and folly, but I am very happy
to think that all is over between you. She never loved you, my Ralph;
for she cares nothing when I speak your name, as I have done two or
three times; nor yet Master More either. I