"Sweet soul!" murmured the nun. "It was well for her to be taken from your
troubled England to the kingdom of the saints and martyrs."

"True, reverend mother; yet those blasphemous levellers who call us
'Malignants' have dubbed themselves 'Saints.'"

"Then affairs go no better with you in England, I fear, Sir John?"

"Nay, madam, they go so ill that they have reached the lowest depth of
infamy. Hell itself hath seen no spectacle more awful, no murder more
barbarous, no horrider triumph of wickedness, than the crime which was
perpetrated this day se'nnight at Whitehall."

The nun looked at him wistfully, with clasped hands, as one who half
apprehended his meaning.

"The King!" she faltered, "still a prisoner?"

"Ay, reverend lady, but a prisoner in Paradise, where angels are his
guards, and saints and martyrs his companions. He has regained his crown;
but it is the crown of martyrdom, the aureole of slaughtered saints.
England, our little England that was once so great under the strong rule
of that virgin-queen who made herself the arbiter of Christendom, and the
wonder of the world----"

The pious lady shivered and crossed herself at this praise of the heretic
queen--praise that could only come from a heretic.

"Our blessed and peaceful England has become a den of thieves, given over