"Walter, Walter!" exclaimed Constance, clasping her hands.
"I crave your pardon, Lady," said Burrell, without altering his tone;
"but do not thus alarm yourself: my sword shall not again be drawn upon
a low and confirmed malignant. Sir," turning from his opponent and
addressing the stranger, "heard you not how he applied the forbidden
title of majesty to the man Charles Stuart; shall I not forthwith arrest
him for high treason?--runneth not the act so, formed for the renouncing
and disannulling of the pretended title of the late man's progeny?"
"Perish such acts and their devisers!" shouted the Cavalier, losing all
prudence in the excitement of the moment. "Let the lady retire, while we
end this quarrel as becomes men!"
"Heed him not, heed him not, I implore, I entreat you!" exclaimed
Constance, sinking to the earth at the feet of Major Wellmore, by whom
the hint of Burrell was apparently unnoticed; "the lion takes not
advantage of the deer caught in the hunter's toils, and he is
distraught, I know he is!"
"I am not distraught, Miss Cecil, though I have suffered enough to make
me so: what care I for acts formed by a pack of regicides!"
"Young man," interrupted the old officer with a burst of fierce and
strong passion that, like a mountain torrent, carried all before it,
"I arrest you in the name of the Commonwealth and its Protector! A
night in one of the lone chambers of Cecil Place will cool the
bravo-blood that riots in your veins, and teach you prudence, if the
Lord denies you grace."
He laid his hand so heavily on De Guerre's shoulder, that his frame
quailed beneath its weight, while the point of his sword rested on the
peaceful grass. Burrell attempted, at the same instant, to steal the
weapon from his hand: the Cavalier grasped it firmly; while Major
Wellmore, darting on the false knight a withering look, emphatically
observed, and with a total change of manner,-"I can, methinks, make good a capture without your aid, kind sir;
although I fully appreciate your zeal in the cause of the
Commonwealth!" The latter part of the sentence was pronounced with a
slow and ironical emphasis; then, turning to De Guerre, he added, "I
need not say to you that, being under arrest, your sword remains with
me."
De Guerre presented it in silence; for the result of his interview with
Constantia had rendered him indifferent to his fate, and, although but
an hour before it would have been only with his life that his sword had
been relinquished, he now cared not for the loss of either.