Happily for old Lady Kirkland, she was too lame to walk, and her enemies
had no horse or carriage in which to convey her; so she was left at peace
in her son's plundered mansion, whence all that was valuable and easily
portable was carried away by the Roundheads. Silver plate and family plate
had been sacrificed to the King's necessities.
The pictures, not being either portable or readily convertible into cash,
had remained on the old panelled walls.
Angela used to go from the King's picture to her father's. Sir John's was
a more rugged face than the Stuart's, with a harder expression; but the
child's heart went out to the image of the father she had never seen since
the dawn of consciousness. He had made a hurried journey to that quiet
Buckinghamshire valley soon after her birth--had looked at the baby in her
cradle, and then had gone down into the vault where his young wife was
lying, and had stayed for more than an hour in cold and darkness alone with
his dead. That lovely French wife had been his junior by more than twenty
years, and he had loved her passionately--had loved her and left her for
duty's sake. No Kirkland had ever faltered in his fidelity to crown and
king.
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