"Ah!" said Antony, with a long breath, as though making a discovery,
"sits the wind in that quarter?"

"Antony," exclaimed she, in her eagerness calling him by the familiar
name of childhood, "you are in error. I declare most solemnly that
it is quite another matter that stands in your way."

"And you will not tell me wherefore you are thus cruel?"

"I cannot, sir. You will understand in time that what you call
cruelty is true kindness."

This was the gist of the interview. All the rest only repeated it in
one form or another; and when Cis returned, it was with a saddened
heart, for she could not but perceive that Antony was well-nigh
crazed, not so much with love of her, as with the contemplation of
the wrongs of the Church and the Queen, whom he regarded with equally
passionate devotion, and with burning zeal and indignation to avenge
their sufferings, and restore them to their pristine glory. He did,
indeed, love her, as he professed to have done from infancy, but as
if she were to be his own personal portion of the reward. Indeed
there was magnanimity enough in the youth almost to lose the
individual hope in the dazzle of the great victory for which he was
willing to devote his own life and happiness in the true spirit of a
crusader. Cicely did not fully or consciously realise all this, but
she had such a glimpse of it as to give her a guilty feeling in
concealing from him the whole truth, which would have shown how
fallacious were the hopes that her mother did not scruple, for her
own purposes, to encourage. Poor Cicely! she had not had royal
training enough to look on all subjects as simply pawns on the