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"But there is an end to all things, and it looks to me as if we were mighty near to an end of the siege of Harby. Why else should there be a truce called that the Roundhead captain may have speech with my lady." "Honest John Thoroughgood," Halfman answered, with great composure, "you are not so wise as you think.
It was the west room at Harby Harby where he lay a prisoner on parole, Harby which he had tried to take and which had ended by taking him. He leaped from his bed instantly, well awake, well alive, and gaining the window peeped through the parted curtains. He looked out across the moat on the terrace to the rear of Harby, beyond which lay the spacious gardens for which Harby was held famous.
Randolph Harby dropped into a chair and chuckled. "No wonder you stare as if you faced a spectre. But I'm flesh and blood, lad." Rufus, trying to collect himself against this staggering blow, again raised a warning hand. "For Heaven's sake speak lower! The King is asleep yonder. How do you come here?" Randolph leaned over and whispered, giggling, into Sir Rufus's ear.
In the great hall at Harby a motley fellowship were assembled. If a stranger from a strange land, wafted thither on some winged Arabian carpet or flying horse of ebony, could have beheld the place and the company, he would have been hard put to it to find any reasonable explanation of what his eyes witnessed.
We further learn that Brilliana accompanied the Queen in whom Mr. Marfleet traces a remarkable likeness to Jezebel to France in 1644, after which "flight of kites, crows, and other carrion fowl" the words are Mr. Marfleet's the estate of Harby came, through the good offices of General Cromwell, into the hands of Colonel Evander Cloud, much to Mr.
But with nobody to lead them, there was nothing for them to do but to stare at the grave-faced men in sober clothes with guns upon their shoulders and steel upon their breasts who tramped along towards Harby Hall.
She told them how Harby was menaced; she told them what she meant to do. She and Captain Halfman meant to hold the place for the King so long as there was a place to hold. But she would constrain none to stay with her, and she offered to all who pleased the choice to go down into the village and bide there till the business was ended one way or the other.
After the Restoration, Harby Hall passed by mutual arrangement into the hands of Sir Randolph Harby, who had cheerfully ruined himself in the service of his King. Through him the name still persists in Maryland, in America. Harby itself was destroyed by fire early in the eighteenth century. It was not rebuilt; the moat was filled up, and no trace of Loyalty House remains to-day.
"You are a gentleman," he declared. "Come, let us taste the air in the gardens." The gardens of Harby were captain jewels in the crown of Oxfordshire. From the terrace they spread in spaces of changeful beauty over many acres of fruitful earth. Evander had seen to it that no further harm was done to these lovely spaces than was inevitable for the conduct of the siege.
His own face was in shadow and the chatelaine could not distinguish its features. "Have I the honor to address the Lady Brilliana Harby?" he asked. "I am the Lady Brilliana Harby," the girl answered. "What is your business here?" "I come, madam," Evander replied, "a servant of the Parliament and of the English people, to safeguard this mansion in their name."