“‘Twere better you paid your servants’ wages, Marmaduke,” she retorted harshly, “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 fought once; had raised longing hands towards brilliant things and sighed after glory, or riches, or fame, but whose restless spirit had since been tamed, crushed under the heavy weight of unsatisfied ambition.