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Rh mighty consequences were forgotten in the single idea of Cromwell being dead. One by one the important results rose up within his mind, and he felt that the present was the epoch in his companion's life,—was he prepared to meet it? Henry Cromwell's first words proved that he was not. "I am half inclined," said he, in a hesitating voice, "to proclaim Charles Stuart." Half inclined!—that little phrase contains the secrets of all failures: it is the strong will, which knows nothing of hesitation, that masters the world. His father had no half-inclinings.

"Proclaim Charles Stuart!" exclaimed Evelyn. "Impossible!—it were the basest outrage upon your father's memory. Do you dare, before his body is cold in the grave, thus to declare his life to have been a crime, and his authority a tyranny—to which you submitted from fear, and now seize the first moment of denying? Will you act in such instant and direct opposition to all that he held necessary and right? Will you brand him as a usurper?"

Henry stood silent, but unconvinced; for a weak mind is not easily dislodged from its first impulse—retaining from cowardice what it caught from surprise.