"Perhaps I was wrong in the means I adopted; but I longed for an
honest name, and it occurred to me that Sir Robert Cecil could be
frightened, if not persuaded, into procuring my pardon. God is my judge
that I was weary of my reckless habits, and panted for active but legal
employment. A blasted oak will tumble to the earth, if struck by a
thunderbolt,--like a withy. Then my child! I knew that Lady Cecil cared
for her, though, good lady, she little thought, when she first saw the
poor baby, that it was the child of a Buccaneer. She believed it the
offspring of a pains-taking trader, who had served her husband. She
guessed the truth in part afterwards, but had both piety and pity in her
bosom, and did not make the daughter suffer for the father's sin. I
loved the girl!--But your Highness is yourself a father, and would not
like to feel ashamed to look your own child in the face. I threatened
Sir Robert to make known all--and expose these documents----"
The Skipper drew from his vest the same bundle of papers which he had
used in that room, almost on that very spot, to terrify the stricken
Baronet, a few months before. Sir Robert Cecil had remained totally
unconscious of the explanations that had been made, and seemed neither
to know of, nor to heed, the presence of Dalton, nor the important
communication he had given--his eyes wandering from countenance to
countenance of the assembled group,--a weak, foolish smile resting
perpetually on his lip; yet the instant he caught a glimpse of the
packet the Buccaneer held in his hand, his memory returned: he staggered
from his daughter--who, after her appeal to Cromwell, clung to her
father's side, as if heroically resolved to share his disgrace to the
last--and grasped at the papers.
"What need of keeping them?" said the Protector, much affected at the
scene: "give them to him, give them to him."
Dalton obeyed, and Sir Robert clutched them with the avidity of a
maniac: he stared at them, enwreathed as they were by his thin,
emaciated fingers, and then, bursting into a mad fit of exulting
laughter, fell prostrate on the floor, before any one had sufficiently
recovered from the astonishment his renewed strength had occasioned, to
afford him any assistance. He was immediately raised by Constantia and
his attendants, and conveyed to his own apartment, still holding fast
the papers, though he gave little other sign of life. There was another,
besides his daughter, who followed the stricken man--his nephew Walter.