The stories she heard in her childhood were stories of that
fierce war which was reaching its disastrous close while she was in her
cradle. She was told of the happy peaceful England of old, before darkness
and confusion gathered over the land; before the hearts of the people were
set against their King by a wicked and rebellious Parliament.
She heard of battles lost by the King and his partisans; cities besieged
and taken; a flash of victory followed by humiliating reverses; the King's
party always at a disadvantage; and hence the falling away of the feeble
and the false, the treachery of those who had seemed friends, the impotence
of the faithful.
Angela heard so often and so much of these things--from old Lady Kirkland,
her grandmother, and from the grey-haired servants at the manor--that she
grew to understand them with a comprehension seemingly far beyond her
tender years. But a child so reared is inevitably older than her years.
This little one had never known childish pleasures or play, childish
companions or childish fancies.
She roamed about the spacious gardens, full of saddest thoughts, burdened
with all the cares that weighed down that kingly head yonder; or she stood
before the pictured face of the monarch with clasped hands and tearful
eyes, looking up at him with the adoring compassion of a child prone to
hero-worship--thinking of him already as saint and martyr--whose martyrdom
was not yet consummated in blood.
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