Nor was he less affected when his aunt, Mrs. Rachel,
narrated the sufferings and fortitude of Lady Alice Waverley during the
Great Civil War. The benevolent features of the venerable spinster
kindled into more majestic expression as she told how Charles had, after
the field of Worcester, found a day's refuge at Waverley-Honour, and how,
when a troop of cavalry were approaching to search the mansion, Lady
Alice dismissed her youngest son with a handful of domestics, charging
them to make good with their lives an hour's diversion, that the king
might have that space for escape. 'And, God help her,' would Mrs. Rachel
continue, fixing her eyes upon the heroine's portrait as she spoke, 'full
dearly did she purchase the safety of her prince with the life of her
darling child. They brought him here a prisoner, mortally wounded; and
you may trace the drops of his blood from the great hall door along the
little gallery, and up to the saloon, where they laid him down to die at
his mother's feet. But there was comfort exchanged between them; for he
knew, from the glance of his mother's eye, that the purpose of his
desperate defence was attained.
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