—­sang the earl in a mellow tenor voice.

‘My lord, an’ I have leave to speak,’ said Dorothy, ’did you not say the diamond in that ring Richard Heywood sent me was of some worth?’

’I did, cousin.  It is a stone of the finest water, and of good weight, though truly I weighed it not.’

‘Then would I cast it in the king’s treasury, an’ if your lordship would condescend to be the bearer of such a small offering.’

‘No, child; the king robs not orphans.’

’Did the King of Kings rob the poor widow that cast in her two mites, then?’

’No; but perhaps the priests did.  Still, as I say, the hour may come when all our mites may be wanted, and thine be accepted with the rest, but my father and I have yet much to give, and shall have given it before that hour come.  Besides, as to thee, Dorothy, what would that handsome roundhead of thine say, if instead of keeping well the ring he gave thee, thou had turned it to the use he liked the least?’

‘He will never ask me concerning it,’ said Dorothy, with a faint smile.

’Be not over-sure of it, child.  My lady asks me many things I never thought to tell her before the priest made us one.  Dorothy, I have no right and no wish to spy into thy future, and fright thee with what, if it come at all, will come peacefully as June weather.  I have not constructed thy horoscope to cast thy nativity, and therefore I speak as one of the ignorant; but let me tell thee, for I do say it confidently, that if these wars were once over, and the king had his own again, there will be few men in his three kingdoms so worthy of the hand and heart of Dorothy Vaughan as that same roundhead fellow, Richard Heywood.  I would to God he were as good a catholic as he is a mistaken puritan!  And now, my lady, may I not send thy maiden from us, for I would talk with thee alone of certain matters—­not from distrust of Dorothy, but that they are not my own to impart, therefore I pray her absence.’

The parliament having secured the assistance of the Scots, and their forces having, early in the year, entered England, the king on his side was now meditating an attempt to secure the assistance of the Irish catholics, to which the devotion of certain of the old catholic houses at home encouraged him.  But it was a game of terrible danger, for if he lost it, he lost everything; and that it should transpire before maturity would be to lose it absolutely; for the Irish catholics had, truly or falsely, been charged with such enormities during the rebellion, that they had become absolutely hateful in the eyes of all English protestants, and any alliance with them must cost him far more in protestants than he could gain by it in catholics.  It was necessary therefore that he should go about it with the utmost caution; and indeed in his whole management of it, the wariness far exceeded the dignity, and was practised at the expense of his best friends.  But the poor king was such a believer in his father’s pet doctrine of the divine right of his inheritance, that not only would he himself sacrifice everything to the dim shadow of royalty which usurped the throne of his conscience, but would, without great difficulty or compunction, though not always without remorse, accept any sacrifice which a subject might have devotion enough to bring to the altar before which Charles Stuart acted as flamen.