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"BUT I AM GRIEVED I HAVE NO VIRGIL." P. 160

Copyright, 1899,

By Longmans, Green, And Co.

All rights reserved

First Edition, September, 1899
Reprinted October, 1899

University Press
John Wilson And Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

TO THE
BARON TANNEGUY DE WOGAN

The Representative of a House illustrious for its Antiquity:
In Prosperity splendid: in Exile and Poverty gay
and constant: of Loyalty unshaken;

Is Dedicated

This Narrative, founded on the deeds of his Ancestor,

The Chevalier Nicholas De Wogan.

A. E. W. M.
A. L.

PREFACE

The authors wish to say that the proceedings of Lady Oxford are unhistorical. Swift mentions a rumour that there was such a lady, but leaves her anonymous.

CONTENTS

PARSON KELLY

CHAPTER I

[THE PARSON EXPRESSES IRREPROACHABLE SENTIMENTS AT THE MAZARIN PALACE]

"What mighty quarrels rise from trivial things!"

So wrote Mr. Alexander Pope, whom Nicholas Wogan remembers as a bookish boy in the little Catholic colony of Windsor Forest. The line might serve as a motto for the story which Mr. Wogan (now a one-armed retired colonel of Dillon's Irish Brigade in French Service) is about to tell. The beginnings of our whole mischancy business were trivial in themselves, and in all appearance unrelated to the future. They were nothing more important than the purchase of a couple of small strong-boxes and the placing of Parson Kelly's patrimony in Mr. Law's company of the West. Both of these events happened upon the same day.

It was early in February of the year 1719, and the streets of Paris were deep in snow. Wogan, then plotting for King James's cause, rode into Paris from St. Omer at ten o'clock of the forenoon, and just about the same hour Parson Kelly, plotting too in his way, drove through the Orleans gate.

A few hours later the two men met in the Marais, or rather Nicholas Wogan saw the skirts of Kelly's coat vanishing into an ironmonger's shop, and ran in after him. Kelly was standing by the counter with a lady on either side of him, as was the dear man's wont; though their neighbourhood on this occasion was the merest accident, for the Parson knew neither of them.

'Sure it's my little friend the lace merchant,' said Wogan, and clapped his hand pretty hard on the small of his friend's back, whom he had not seen for a twelvemonth and more. Kelly stumbled a trifle, maybe, and no doubt he coughed and spluttered. One of the ladies dropped her purse and shuddered into a corner.

'Quelle bête sauvage!' murmured the second with one indignant eye upon Nicholas Wogan, and the other swimming with pity for Mr. Kelly.

'Madame,' said Wogan, picking up the purse and restoring it with his most elegant bow, 'it was pure affection.'

'No doubt,' said Kelly, as he rubbed his shoulder; 'but, Nick, did you never hear of the bear that smashed his master's skull in the endeavour to stroke off a fly that had settled on his nose? That was pure affection too.'

He turned back to the counter, on which the shopman was setting out a number of small strong-boxes, and began to examine them.

'Well, you must e'en blame yourself, George,' said Nick, 'for the mere sight of you brings the smell of the peat to my nostrils and lends vigour to my hand.'

This he said with all sincerity, for the pair had been friends in county Kildare long before Kelly went to Dublin University, and took deacon's orders, and was kicked out of the pulpit for preaching Jacobitism in his homilies. As boys they had raced bare-legged over the heather, and spent many an afternoon in fighting over again that siege of Rathcoffey Castle which an earlier Nicholas Wogan had held so stoutly for King Charles. The recollection of those days always played upon Wogan's foolish heartstrings with a touch soft as a woman's fingers, and very likely it now set George Kelly's twanging to the same tune; for at Wogan's words he turned himself about with a face suddenly illumined.

'Here, Nick, lay your hand there,' said he and stretched out his hand. 'You will be long in Paris?'

'No more than a night. And you?'

'Just the same time.'

He turned again to the counter, and busied himself with his boxes in something of a hurry, as though he would avoid further questioning. Wogan blew a low whistle.

Maybe we are on the same business, eh?' he asked. 'The King's business?'

'Whisht, man,' whispered Kelly quickly, and he glanced about the shop. 'Have you no sense at all?'

The shop was empty at the moment, and there was no reason that Wogan could see for his immoderate secrecy. But the Parson was much like the rest of the happy-go-lucky conspirators who were intriguing to dislodge the Elector from the English throne--cautious by fits and moods, and the more often when there was the less need. But let a scheme get ripe for completion, and sure they imagined it completed already, and at once there would be letters left about here, for all the world to read, and a wink and a sly word there, so that it was little short of a miracle when a plot was launched before it had been discovered by those it was launched against. Not that you are to attribute to Mr. Wogan any superior measure of reticence. On the contrary, it is very probable that it was precisely Mr. Wogan's tongue which George Kelly distrusted, and if so, small blame to him. At any rate, he pursed up his lips and stiffened his back. Consequence turned him into a ramrod, and with a voice pitched towards the shopman:

'I am still in the muslin trade,' said he, meaning that he collected money for the Cause. 'I shall cross to England to-morrow.'

'Indeed and will you now?' said Wogan, who was perhaps a little contraried by his friend's reserve. 'Then I'll ask you to explain what these pretty boxes have to do with the muslin trade?'

'They are to carry my samples in,' replied Kelly readily enough; and then, as if to put Wogan's questions aside, 'Are you for England, too?'

'No,' said Wogan, imitating Mr. Kelly's importance; 'I am going to visit my Aunt Anne at Cadiz; so make the most of that, my little friend.'

Wogan was no great dab at the cyphers and the jargon of the plots, but he knew that the Duke of Ormond, being then in Spain, figured in the correspondence as my Aunt Anne. It was now Kelly's turn to whistle, and that he did, and then laughed besides.

'I might have guessed,' said he, 'for there's a likely prospect of broken heads at all events, and to that magnet you were never better than a steel filing.'

'Whisht, man,' exclaimed Wogan, frowning and wagging his head preposterously. 'Is it yourself that's the one person in the world to practise mysteries? Broken heads, indeed!' and he shrugged his shoulder as though he had a far greater business on hand. Kelly's curiosity rose to the bait, and he put a question or two which Wogan waived aside. The Parson indeed had hit the truth. Wogan had no business whatsoever except the mere fighting, but since the Parson was for practising so much dignified secrecy, Wogan would do no less.

To carry the joke a step further, he turned to the counter, even as Kelly had done, and examined the despatch-boxes. He would buy one, to convince Kelly that he, too, was trusted with secret papers. The boxes were as like to one another as peas, but Wogan discovered a great dissimilitude of defects.

'There's not one of them fit to keep a mouldy cheese in,' said he, tapping and sounding them with his knuckles, 'let alone--' and then he caught himself up with a glance at Kelly. 'However, this perhaps may serve--but wait a little.' He felt in his pockets and by chance discovered a piece of string. This string he drew out and carefully measured the despatch-box, depth and width and length. Then he put the tip of his thumb between his teeth and bit it in deep thought. 'Well, and it must serve, since there's no better; but for heaven's sake, my man, clap a stouter lock on it! I could smash this with my fist. A good stout lock; and send it--wait a moment!' He glanced towards Kelly and turned back to the shopman. 'I'll just write down where you are to send it to.'

To Kelly's more complete mystification he scribbled a name and an address on a sheet of paper, and folded it up with an infinity of precautions.

'Send it there, key and all, by nine o'clock tomorrow morning.'

The name was Mr. Kelly's, the address the inn at which Mr. Kelly was in the habit of putting up. Wogan bought the box merely to gull Kelly into the belief that he, also, was a Royal messenger. Then he paid for the box, and forthwith forgot all about it over a bottle of wine. Kelly, for his part, held his despatch-box in his hand.

'Nick, I have business,' said he as soon as the bottle was empty, 'and it appears you have too. Shall we meet to-night? Mr. Law expects me at the Mazarin Palace.'

'Faith, then I'll make bold to intrude upon him,' said Nicholas, who, though Mr. Law kept open house for those who favoured the White Rose, was but a rare visitor to the Mazarin Palace, holding the financier in so much awe that no amount of affability could extinguish it.

However, that night he went, and so learned in greater particular the secret of the Parson's journey. It was nine o'clock at night when Wogan turned the corner of the Rue Vivienne and saw the windows of the Mazarin Palace blazing out upon the snow. A little crowd shivered and gaped beneath them, making, poor devils! a vicarious supper off the noise of Mr. Law's entertainment. And it was a noisy party that Mr. Law entertained. Before he was half-way down the street Wogan could hear the peal of women's laughter and a snatch of a song, and after that maybe a sound of breaking glass, as though a tumbler had been edged off the table by an elbow. He was shown up the great staircase to a room on the first floor.

'Monsieur Nicholas de Wogan,' said the footman, throwing open the door. Wogan stepped into the company of the pretty arch conspirators who were then mismanaging the Chevalier's affairs. However, with their mismanagement Wogan is not here concerned, for this is not a story of Kings and Queens and high politics but of the private fortunes of Parson Kelly. Olive Trant was playing backgammon in a corner with Mr. Law. Madame de Mezières, who was seldom absent when politics were towards, graced the table and conversed with Lady Cecilia Law. And right in front of Mr. Wogan stood that madcap her sister, Fanny Oglethorpe, with her sleeves tucked back to her elbows, looking gloriously jolly and handsome. She was engaged in mincing chickens in a china bowl which was stewing over a little lamp on the table, for, said she, Mr. Law had aspersed the English cooks, and she was minded to make him eat his word and her chicken that very night for supper. She had Parson Kelly helping her upon the one side, and a young French gentleman whom Wogan did not know upon the other; and the three of them were stirring in the bowl with a clatter of their wooden spoons.

'Here's Mr. Wogan,' cried Fanny Oglethorpe, and as Wogan held out his hand she clapped her hot spoon into it. 'M. de Bellegarde, you must know Mr. Wogan. He has the broadest back of any man that ever I was acquainted with. You must do more than know him. You must love him, as I do, for the broadness of his back.'

M. de Bellegarde looked not over-pleased with the civility of her greeting, and bowed to Wogan with an affectation of ceremony. Mr. Law came forward with an affable word. Olive Trant added another, and Madame de Mezières asked eagerly what brought him to Paris.

'He is on his way to join the Duke of Ormond at Cadiz,' cried Kelly; 'and,' said this man deceived, 'he carries the most important messages. Bow to him, ladies! Gentlemen, your hands to your hearts, and your knees to the ground! It's no longer a soldier of fortune that you see before you, but a diplomatist, an ambassador: His Excellency, the Chevalier Wogan;' and with that he ducked and bowed, shaking his head and gesticulating with his hands, as though he were some dandified court chamberlain. All the Parson's diplomacy had been plainly warmed out of him in his present company. Mr. Law began to laugh, but Fanny Oglethorpe dropped her spoon and looked at Wogan.

'The Duke of Ormond?' said she, lowering her voice.

'Indeed? and you carry messages?' said Miss Olive Trant, upsetting the backgammon board.

'Of what kind?' exclaimed Madame de Mezières; and then, in an instant, their pretty heads were clustered about the table, and their mouths whispering questions, advice, and precautions, all in a breath. 'It's at Bristol you are to land?' 'The Earl Marischal is for Scotland?' 'You carry 5,000 barrels, Mr. Wogan?' meaning thereby stands of arms. And, 'You may speak with all confidence,' Miss Oglethorpe urged, with a glance this way and that over her shoulders. 'There are none but honest people here. M. de Bellegarde,' and she looked towards the French spark, blushing very prettily, 'is my good friend.'

Mr. Wogan bowed.

'It was not that I doubted M. de Bellegarde,' he replied. 'But 'faith, ladies, I have learnt more of the prospects of the expedition from your questions than ever I knew before. I was told for a certain thing that heads would be broken, and, to be sure, I was content with the information.'

At that Mr. Law laughed. Kelly asked, 'What of the despatch-box, then?' The ladies pouted their resentment; and Mr. Wogan, for the first and last time in his life, wore the reputation of a diplomatist. 'A close man,' said M. de Bellegarde, pursing his lips in approval.

'But sped on an unlikely venture,' added Mr. Law, getting back to his backgammon. 'Oh, I know,' he continued, as the voices rose against him, 'you have grumblings enough in England to fill a folio, and so you think the whole country will hurry to the waterside to welcome you, before you have set half your foot on shore. But, when all is said, the country's prosperous. Your opportunity will come with its misfortunes.'

But Madame de Mezières would hear nothing of such forebodings; and Olive Trant, catching up a glass, swung it above her head.

'May the Oak flourish!' she cried.

Fanny Oglethorpe sprang from her seat. 'May the White Rose bloom!' she answered, giving the counter-word. The pair clinked their glasses.

'Aye, that's the spirit!' cried the Parson. 'Drink, Nick! God save the King! Here's a bumper to him!'

He stood with his face turned upwards, his blue eyes afire. 'Here's to the King!' he repeated. 'Here's to the Cause! God send that nothing ever come between the Cause and me.' He drained his glass as he spoke, and tossed it over his shoulder. There was a tinkling sound, and a flash of sparks, as it were, when the glass splintered against the wall. George Kelly stood for a moment, arrested in his attitude, his eyes staring into vacancy, as though some strange news had come of a sudden knocking at his heart. Then he hitched his shoulders. 'Bah!' he cried, and began to sing in a boisterous voice some such ditty as

Of all the days that's in the year,
The tenth of June's to me most dear,
When our White Roses do appear

To welcome Jamie the Rover.

Or it may have been

Let our great James come over,
And baffle Prince Hanover,
With hearts and hands in loyal bands,

We'll welcome him at Dover.

It was not the general practice to allow the Parson to sing without protest; for he squeezed less music out of him than any other Irishman could evoke from a deal board with his bare knuckles. When he sang, and may Heaven forgive the application of the word in this conjunction, there was ever a sort of mortal duello between his voice and the tune--very distressing to an audience. But now he sang his song from beginning to end, and no one interrupted him, or so much as clapped a hand over an ear; and this not out of politeness. But his words so rang with a startling fervour; and he stood, with his head thrown back, rigid in the stress of passion. His voice quavered down to silence, but his eyes still kept their fires, his attitude its fixity. Once or twice he muttered a word beneath his breath, and then a hoarse cry came leaping from his mouth.

'May nothing ever come between the Cause and me, except it be death--except it be death!'

A momentary silence waited upon the abrupt cessation of his voice: Wogan even held his breath; Miss Oglethorpe did not stir; and during that silence, there came a gentle rapping on the door. Kelly looked towards it with a start, as though there was his answer; but the knocking was repeated before anyone moved; it seemed as if suspense had hung its chains upon every limb. It was Mr. Wogan who opened the door, and in stalked Destiny in the shape of a lackey. He carried a note, and handed it to George Kelly.

'The messenger has but this instant brought it,' he said.

Kelly broke the seal, and unfolded the paper.

'From General Dillon,' he said; and, reading the note through, 'Ladies, will you pardon me? Mr. Law, I have your permission? I have but this one night in Paris, and General Dillon has news of importance which bears upon my journey.'

With that he took his hat, and got him from the room. Fanny Oglethorpe sprang up from her chair.

'Sure, my chicken will be ruined,' she cried. 'Come, M. de Bellegarde,' and the pair fell again to stirring in the bowl, and with such indiscriminate vigour that more than once their fingers got entangled. This Mr. Wogan observed, and was sufficiently indiscreet to utter a sly proposal that he should make a third at the stirring.

'There is no need for a third,' said Miss Oglethorpe, with severity. 'But, on the other hand, I want a couple of pats of butter, and a flagon of water; and I shall be greatly obliged if Mr. Wogan will procure me them.' And what with that and other requests which chanced to come into her head, she kept him busy until the famous supper was prepared.

In the midst of that supper back came Mr. Kelly, and plumped himself down in his chair, very full of his intelligence. A glass or two of Mr. Law's burgundy served to warm out of his blood all the reserve that was left over from the morning.

'We are all friends here,' said he, turning to Miss Oglethorpe. 'Moreover, I need the advantage of your advice and knowledge. General Dillon believes that my Lord Oxford maybe persuaded to undertake the muslin trade in Britain.'

'Lord Oxford,' exclaimed Miss Oglethorpe, with a start, for Oxford had lain quiet since he nearly lost his head five years agone. 'He is to collect the money from our supporters?'

'It is the opinion that he will, if properly approached.'

Mr. Law, at the top of the table, shook his head.

'It is a very forward and definite step for so prudential a politician,' said he.

'But a politician laid on a shelf, and pining there,' replied George. 'There's the reason for it. He has a hope of power,--Qui a bu, boira! The hope grows real if we succeed.'

'I would trust him no further than a Norfolk attorney,' returned Mr. Law; 'and that's not an inch from the end of my nose. He will swear through a two-inch board to help you, and then turn cat in pan if a Whig but smile at him.'

'Besides,' added Miss Oglethorpe, and she rested, her chin thoughtfully upon her hands. As she spoke, all the eyes in that company were turned on her. 'Besides,' and then she came to a stop, and flushed a little. 'Lord Oxford,' she continued, 'was my good friend when I was in England.' Then she stopped again. Finally she looked straight into M. de Bellegarde's eyes, and with an admirable bravery: 'Some, without reason, have indeed slandered me with stories that he was more than my friend.'

'None, Madame, who know you, I'll warrant,' said M. de Bellegarde, and gravely lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it.

'Well, that's a very pretty answer,' said she in some confusion. 'So Mr. Kelly may know,' she went on, 'that I speak with some authority concerning my Lord Oxford. It is not he whom I distrust. But he has lately married a young wife.'

'Ah,' said Mr. Law, and 'Oh!' cried Mr. Wogan, with a shrug of his shoulders. 'If a lady is to dabble her tender fingers in the pie--'

'And what of it, Mr. Wogan?' Madame de Mezières took him up coldly.

'Yes, Mr. Wogan, what of it?' repeated Olive Trant hotly, 'provided the lady be loyal.' In an instant Mr. Wogan had the whole nest swarming about his ears, with the exception of Fanny Oglethorpe. It was intimated to him that he had a fine preposterous conceit of his sex, and would he be pleased to justify it?

Madame de Mezières hinted that the ability to swing a shillelagh and bring it down deftly on an offending sconce did not comprise the whole virtues of mankind. And if it came to the test of dealing blows, why there was Joan of Arc, and what had Mr. Wogan to say to her? Mr. Wogan turned tail, as he always did when women were in the van of the attack.

'Ladies,' he said, 'I do not think Joan of Arc so singular after all, since I see four here who I believe from my soul could emulate her noblest achievements.'

But Mr. Wogan's gallantry went for very little. The cowardice of it was apparent for all that he bowed and laid his hand on his heart, and performed such antics as he thought likely to tickle women into good humour.

'Besides,' put in Lady Cecilia, with a soothing gentleness, 'Mr. Wogan should know that the cause he serves owes, as it is, much to the good offices of women.'

Mr. Wogan had his own opinions upon that point, but he wiped his forehead and had the discretion to hold his tongue. Meanwhile Fanny Oglethorpe, who had sat with frowning brows in silence, diverted the onslaught.

'But it is just the loyalty of Lady Oxford which is in question. Lady Oxford is a Whig, of a Whig family. She is even related to Mr. Walpole, the Minister. I think Mr. Kelly will have to tread very warily at Lord Oxford's house of Brampton Bryan.'

'For my part,' rejoined Mr. Law, 'I think the Chevalier de St. George would do better to follow the example of Mr. Kelly and my friends here.'

'And what is that?' asked Wogan.

'Why, scrape up all the money he can lay hands on and place it in my company of the West.'

Mr. Wogan was not well pleased to hear of his friend's speculation, and, when they left the house together, took occasion to remonstrate with him.

'How much have you placed?' he asked.

'All that I could,' replied George. 'It is little enough--the remnant of my patrimony. Mr. Law lent me a trifle in addition to make up a round sum. It is a very kindly man, and well disposed to me. I have no fears, for all the money in France dances to the tune he fiddles.'

'To his tune, to be sure,' grumbled Wogan; 'but are you equally certain his tune is yours? Oh, I know. He is a monstrous clever man, not a doubt of it. The computation of figures--it is the devil's own gift, and to my nose it smells damnably of sulphur.'

Mr. Wogan has good occasion to reflect how Providence fleers at one's apprehensions when he remembers the sleepless hours during which he tossed upon his bed that night, seeing all the Parson's scanty savings drowned beyond redemption in the China seas. For no better chance could have befallen Kelly than that Wogan's forebodings should have come true. But the venture succeeded. Fanny Oglethorpe made a fortune and married M. de Bellegarde. Olive Trant, the richer by 100,000 pistoles, became Princess of Auvergne. Do they ever remember that night at the Hotel de Mazarin, and how Parson Kelly cried out almost in an agony as though, in the heat of passion, he surmised the future, 'May nothing come between the Cause and me'? Well, for one thing the money came. It placed in his hands a golden key wherewith to unlock the gates of disaster.

CHAPTER II

[MR. WOGAN REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE AN UNDESIRABLE ACQUAINTANCE IN ST. JAMES'S STREET]

Mr. Wogan left Paris early the next morning without a thought for the despatch-box that he had sent to Kelly, and, coming to Cadiz, sailed with the Spaniards out of that harbour on the tenth of March, and into the great storm which dispersed the fleet off Cape Finisterre. In company with the Earl Marischal and the Marquis of Tullibardine, he was aboard one of those two ships which alone touched the coast of Scotland. Consequently, he figured with better men, as Field-Marshal Keith, and his brother the Ambassador, and my Lord George Murray, in that little skirmish at Glenshiel, and very thankful he was when the night shut black upon the valleys and put its limit to the attack of General Wightman's soldiers from Inverness. A council of war was held in the dark upon a hill-side, whence the fires of General Wightman's camp could be seen twinkling ruddily below, but Wogan heard little of what was disputed, for he went to sleep with his back against a boulder and dreamed of his ancestors. He was waked up about the middle of the night by the Earl Marischal, who informed him that the Spaniards had determined to surrender at discretion, and that the handful of Highlanders were already dispersing to their homes.

'As for ourselves, we shall make for the Western Islands and wait there for a ship to take us off.'

'Then I'll wish you luck and a ship,' said Wogan. He stood up and shook the dew off his cloak. 'I have friends in London, and I'll trust my lucky star to get me there.'

'Your star's in eclipse,' said the Earl. 'You will never reach London except it be with your legs tied under a horse's belly.'

'Well, I'm thinking you have not such a clear path after all to the Western Islands! Did you never hear of my forefather, Thomas Wogan, that rode with twenty-eight Cavaliers through the heart of Cromwell's England, and came safe into the Highlands? Sure what that great man could do with twenty-eight companions to make him conspicuous, his degenerate son can do alone.'

Mr. Wogan began his journey by walking over the hill, near to the top of which his friends had been driven off the road to Inverness by the English fire, which was very well nourished. He made his way to Loch Duich, as they call it, and so by boat round Ardnamurchan, to a hamlet they call Oban. There he changed his dress for the Campbell black and green, and, joining company with a drove of Rob Roy's cattle from the Lennox, travelled to Glasgow. His Irish brogue no doubt sounded a trifle strange in a Highland drover, but he was in a country where the people were friendly. At Glasgow he changed his dress again for a snuff-coloured bourgeois suit, and so rode into England by the old Carlisle and Preston route, which he had known very well in the year 1715.

Wogan was at this time little more than a lad, though full-grown enough to make a man and a good-sized boy into the bargain, and the exploit of the Cavalier Thomas Wogan, as it had prompted his design, so it exhilarated him in the execution. He went lightly on his way, weaving all manner of chivalric tales about his ancestor, to the great increase of his own vanity, bethinking him when he stopped for an hour at a wayside inn that here, too, perhaps Thomas Wogan had reined in his horse, and maybe had taken a draught from that very pint-pot which Nicholas now held to his lips. Thus the late burst up the hill-side above the Shiel was quickly robbed of its sting, and by the time that he had reached London he was so come to a pitch of confidence in the high destinies of the Wogan family that, after leaving his horse in the charge of Mr. Gunning, of Mussell Hill, whom he knew of old as a staunch friend of George Kelly's, and borrowing from him a more suitable raiment than his stained travelling dress, he must needs walk down St. James's Street with no more disguise than the tilting of his hat over his nose, and the burying of his chin in his cravat.

Soon Mr. Wogan's confidence and, with his confidence, his legs were brought to a sudden check. For when he was come half-way down the hill he saw the figure of one Captain Montague in the uniform of the Guards turn the corner out of Ryder Street and walk towards him. Wogan had met the officer before on an occasion of which he did not wish at this particular moment to be reminded. He wheeled about, took a step or two, and so came again to a halt. Was it known, he asked himself, that he had sailed from Cadiz and landed in Scotland? If so, and it was a most likely conjecture, then for Wogan to be straggling about St. James's Street was egregious impertinence, and the sooner he got under shelter the better for his neck. Now Wogan's destination was the lodging of George Kelly, not five hundred yards away, in Bury Street. But to reach that lodging it would be necessary for him to turn about again and face the Captain. Would the Captain know him again? Wogan debated the question, and finding no answer, asked himself another. What would Thomas Wogan have done under the like contingency? The answer to that was evident enough. Wogan turned about on the instant, cocked his hat on the back of his head, took his chin out of his cravat, twirled his cane, whistled a tune and sauntered past the Captain, looking him over as if he were so much dirt. The Captain stopped: Wogan felt his heart jump into his throat, whistled a bit louder, and twirled his cane a trifle ferociously. Over his shoulder he saw the Captain draw his brows together and rub a check with the palm of his hand like a man perplexed. The Captain took a step towards Wogan, and stopped again. Wogan sauntered on, expecting every moment to hear his name called, and a clattering run, and then to feel a heavy hand close upon his shoulder. But no voice spoke, no steps clattered on the pavement. Wogan reached the corner and spied up St. James's Street as he turned. The Captain was still standing in the attitude of perplexity; only, instead of smoothing his cheek, he had tilted his peruke aside and was scratching his head to ease the labour of his recollections. At the sight of him the ancestor and his twenty-eight Cavaliers rode clean out of Mr. Wogan's mind. 'Sure, Thomas wouldn't have done it, but Nicholas will,' said he, and kicking up his heels he ran. He ran along Ryder Street, turned into Bury Street, raced a hundred yards or so up the cobbles, and thundered on the door of Kelly's lodging. Here and there a head was poked from a window, and Mr. Wogan cursed his own noisiness. It seemed an age before the door was opened. Fortunately it was Mrs. Barnes, Kelly's landlady, in person, and not her serving-woman, who stood in the entrance.

'Is the Parson in London?' says Wogan. 'Say that he is, Mrs. Barnes, and say it quick.'

'Why, it's Mr. Wogan!' cries she.

'Whisht, my dear woman!' answered Wogan, pushing through the doorway. 'It's Mr. Hilton. There's no Wogan anywhere in England. Remember that, if you please.'

Mrs. Barnes slammed the door in a hurry.

'Then you are in trouble again,' said she, throwing up her hands.

'Well, there's nothing unusual in that,' said he. 'Sure man is born to it, and who am I that I should escape the inheritance?' and he opened the door of Mr. Kelly's sitting-room. He saw the figure of a man bending over the table. As the door was thrown open, the figure straightened itself hurriedly. There was a sound of an iron lid clanging down upon a box, and the sharp snap of a lock. George Kelly turned and stood between the table and the door, in a posture of defence. Then--

'Nick!' he cried, and grasped his friend's hand. The next moment he let it go. 'What brings you here?' he exclaimed.

'My ancestor,' said Wogan, dropping into a chair. ''Twas his spirit guided me.'

'Then take my word for it,' cried George, 'if there's a Bedlam beyond the grave your ancestor inhabits it.'

Wogan made no reply in words at first. But he rose stiffly from his chair, bowed to Kelly with profuse ceremony, took his hat, and with his hat a step towards the door. Kelly, on the other hand, shut the door, locked it, put the key in his pocket and leaned his back against the panels. Wogan affected to see nothing of these actions, but spoke in a tone of dignity like a man taking his leave.

'Such insults as you are pleased to confer on me,' said he, 'no doubt I deserve, and I take them in all Christian meekness. But when my ancestor Thomas Wogan, God rest his soul for ever and ever, rode with twenty-eight Cavaliers from Dover to Scotland through the thick of his bloodthirsty foes to carry the succour of his presence to the friends of his blessed Majesty of sacred memory King Charles the Second, it was not, I'd have you know, Mr. Kelly, in order that his name should be bespattered after he was dead by a snuffling long-legged surreptitious gawk of a parson who was kicked out of his Dublin pulpit with every circumstance of ignominy because his intellect didn't enable him to compose a homily.'

At this point Wogan drew a long breath, which he sorely needed. It was not at all truth that he had spoken, as he knew--none better. The Parson was indeed stripped of his gown because he preached a very fine homily on the text of 'Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's,' wherein he mingled many timely and ingenious allusions to the Chevalier. Nor was there any particular force in that epithet 'surreptitious,' beyond that it had an abusive twang. Yet it was just that word at which Mr. Kelly took offence.

'Surreptitious,' said he, 'and if you please what is the meaning of that?'

And then surveying Wogan, he began of a sudden to smile.

'Ta-ta-ta,' he said with a grimace.

'It is a pretty though an interjectional wit,' replied Wogan in a high disdain, falling upon long words, as was his fashion on the rare occasions when he cloaked himself with dignity.

'Faith,' continued George, with the smile broadening over his face, 'but it is indeed the very picture of Christian meekness,' and then, breaking into a laugh, 'Will you sit down, you noisy firebrand. As for Thomas Wogan--be damned to him and to all his twenty-eight Cavaliers into the bargain!'

Mr. Wogan will never deny but what the man's laugh was irresistible, for the Parson's features wore in repose something of clerkly look. They were cast in a mould of Episcopal gravity; but when he laughed his blue eyes would lighten at you like the sun from a bank of clouds, and the whole face of him wrinkled and creased into smiles, and his mouth shook a great rumbling laugh out of his throat, and then of a sudden you had come into the company of a jolly man. Wogan put his hat on the table and struggled to preserve his countenance from any expression of friendliness.

'It is the common talk at the Cocoa Tree that you sailed from Cadiz. It is thought that you were one of the remnant at Glenshiel. Oh, the rumour of your whereabouts has marched before you, and that you might have guessed. But see what it is to know no Virgil, and,' shaking a minatory finger,

'Fama, malum quo non aliud velocius ullum.'

Mr. Wogan bowed before Latin like a sapling before the wind. He seated himself as he was bid.

'And you must needs come parading your monstrous person through the thick of London, like any fashionable gentleman,' continued George. 'What am I to do with you? Why couldn't you lie quiet in a village and send me news of you? Did you meet any of your acquaintance by chance when you came visiting your friend Mr. Kelly? Perhaps you passed the time of day with Mr. Walpole--' and as he spoke the name he stopped abruptly. He walked once or twice across the room, shifting his peruke from one side of his head to the other in the fluster of his thoughts. Then he paused before Wogan.

'Oh, what am I to do with you?' he cried. 'Tell me that, if you please.' But the moment Wogan began,

'Sure, George, it's not you that I will be troubling for my security'--Kelly cut in again:

'Oh, if you have nothing better to say than that, you say nothing at all. It is dribbling baby's talk,' and then he repeated a question earnestly. 'Did you see anyone you knew, or rather did anyone that knows you see you?'

'Why,' replied Wogan meekly, 'I cannot quite tell whether he knows me or not, but to be sure I ran into the arms of Captain Montague not half a dozen yards from the corner of Ryder Street.'

'Montague!' exclaimed Kelly. Wogan nodded.

'The man who fought against you at Preston siege?'

'The same.'

''Tis a pity you were at so much pains to save his life in that scuffle.'

'Haven't I been thinking that myself?' asked Wogan. 'If only I had left him lying outside the barricades, where he would have been surely killed by the cross-fire, instead of running out and dragging him in! But it is ever the way. Once do a thoroughly good-natured action and you will find it's the thorn in your side that will turn and sting you. But I am not sure that he knew me,' and he related how the Captain had stopped with an air of perplexed recollection, and had then gone on his way. Kelly listened to the account with a certain relief.

'It is likely that he would not remember you. For one thing, he was wounded when you carried him in, and perhaps gave little heed to the features of his preserver. Moreover, you have changed, Nick, in these years. You were a stripling then, a boy of fifteen, and,' here he smiled and laid a hand on Wogan's shoulder, 'you have grown into a baby in four years.'

Then he took another turn across the room. 'Well, and why not?' he said to himself, and finally brought his fist with a bang upon the table. 'I'll hazard it,' said he. 'I am not sure but what it is the safest way,' and, drawing a chair close to Wogan, he sat himself down.

'It was the mention of Mr. Walpole set me on the plan,' he said. 'You heard in Paris that Lady Oxford is a kinsman of his. Well, I go down to Lord Oxford's in two days. It is a remote village in the north of Herefordshire. You shall come with me as my secretary. 'Faith, but I shall figure in my lord's eyes as a person of the greatest importance.'

Mr. Wogan resisted the proposal as being of some risk to his friend, but Kelly would hear of no argument. The plan grew on him, the more he thought of it. 'You can lie snug here for the two days. Mrs. Barnes is to be trusted, devil a doubt. You can travel down with me in safety. I am plain Mr. Johnson here, engaged in smuggling laces from the Continent into England. And once out of London there will be little difficulty in shipping you out of the country until the affair's blown over.'

So it was arranged, and Kelly, looking at his watch, says--

'By my soul, I am late. I should have been with my Lord of Rochester half-an-hour since. The good Bishop will be swearing like a dragoon.'

He clapped his hat on his head, took up his cane, and marched to the door. His hand was on the knob, when he turned.

'By the way, Nick, I have something which belongs to you. 'Twas sent to my lodging in Paris by mistake. I brought it over, since I was sure to set eyes on you shortly.'

'Ah,' said Nick. 'Then you expected me, for all your scolding and bullying.'

'To speak the honest truth, Nick,' said Kelly, with a laugh, 'I have been expecting you all the last week.'

He went into his bedroom, and brought out the strong-box which Wogan had purchased in Paris.

'Sure there was no mistake,' said Wogan. 'I sent it to you as a reward for your discretion.'

'Oh, you did. Well, you wasted your money, for I have no need for it.'

'Nor I,' replied Wogan. 'But it has a very good lock, and will serve to hold your love-letters.'

Kelly laughed carelessly at the careless words, and laid the box aside upon his scrutore. Many a time in the months that followed Wogan saw it there, and the sight of it would waken him to a laugh, for he did not know that a man's liberty, his honour, his love, came shortly to be locked within its narrow space.

CHAPTER III

[MR. WOGAN INSTRUCTS THE IGNORANT PARSON IN THE WAYS OF WOMEN]

Mr. Wogan then remained for two days closeted in his friend's lodgings, and was hard put to it to pass the time, since the Parson, who acted as secretary and right-hand man to Bishop Atterbury, was ever dancing attendance upon his lordship at Bromley or the Deanery of Westminster. Wogan smoked a deal of tobacco, and, knitting his brows, made a strenuous endeavour to peruse one of George Kelly's books--a translation of Tully's Letters. He did, indeed, read a complete page, and then being seized with a sudden vertigo, such as from his extreme youth had prevented him from a course of study, was forced to discontinue his labours. At this juncture Mrs. Barnes comforted him with a greasy pack of cards, and for the rest of that day he played games of chance for extraordinary stakes, one hand against t'other, winning and losing millions of pounds sterling in the space of a single hour. By bedtime he was sunk in a plethora of wealth and an extremity of destitution at one and the same time; and so, since he saw no way of setting the balance right, he bethought him of another plan. On the morrow he would write out a full history of his ancestors, as a memorial of their valour and a shame to the men of this age.

The Parson, when he was informed of the notable design, quoted a scrap of Latin to the effect that it would be something more than a brazen proceeding. Wogan, however, was not to be dissuaded by any tag of rhyme, and getting up before daylight, since he had but this one day for the enterprise, was at once very busy with all of Kelly's spluttering pens. He began with the founder of the family, the great Chevalier Ugus, who lived in the time of my little Octavius Cæsar, and was commissioned by that unparalleled monarch to build the town of Florence. 'Ugus,' wrote Mr. Wogan in big round painful letters with a flourish to each, and, coming to a stop, woke up George Kelly to ask him in what year of Our Lord Octavius Cæsar was born into this weary world. 'In no year of Our Lord,' grumbled George, a little churlishly to Wogan's thinking, who went back to his desk, and taking up a new pen again wrote 'Ugus.' Thereupon he fell into a great profundity of thought; so many philosophic reflections crowded into his head while he nibbled his pen, as he felt sure must visibly raise him in the estimation of his friends. So, taking his candle in one hand and his pen in the other, he came a second time to Kelly's bedside and sat him down heavily upon his legs, the better to ensure his awakening. It is to be admitted that this time the Parson sat up in his bed, and swore with all the volubility of a dragoon or even of my Lord Bishop of Rochester. But Wogan smiled amiably, knowing when he communicated his thoughts how soon those oaths would turn to cries of admiration.

'It is a very curious thing,' said Wogan, shifting himself a little so that Kelly's shins should not press so sharply, 'how the mere inking of one's fingers produces speculation. Just as great valorous deeds are the consequence of swords,' here he paused to snuff the candle with his fingers, 'so great philosophic thoughts are the consequence of pens. Put a sword in a man's hand! What does he want to do but cut his neighbour right open from the chine to the ribs? Put a pen between his fingers, on the other hand, and what does he want to do but go away by himself and write down great thoughts?'

'Then, in Heaven's name, why don't you do it?' cried George.

'Because, my friend,' replied Wogan, 'out of the great love I bear for you, I shall always, always communicate my thoughts first of all to you.' Here the Parson groaned like a man giving up the ghost, and Wogan continued:

'For instance, you have doubtless heard of my illustrious forbear the Chevalier Ugus.' At this Kelly tried to turn on his side; but he could not do so, since his legs were pinned beneath Wogan's weight. 'The Chevalier Ugus,' repeated Wogan, 'who built and beautified the city of Florence to the glory of God in the reign of the Emperor Octavius. How many of the English have loitered in the colonnades, and feasted their eyes upon the cathedral, and sauntered on the bridges of the Arno? How many of them, I say, have drawn profitable thoughts and pleasurable sensations from the edifices of my great ancestor? And yet not one of them--if poor Nicholas Wogan, his degenerate son, were to poke his nose outside of Mrs. Barnes's front door--not one of them but would truss him hands and heels and hang him up to derision upon a nasty gibbet.'

So far Wogan had flowed on when a sigh from Kelly's lips brought him to a pause. He leaned forward and held the candle so that the light fell upon Kelly's face. Kelly was sound asleep.

'To be sure,' said Wogan in a soft voice of pity, on the chance that Kelly might be counterfeiting slumber, 'my little friend's jealous of my reflective powers,' and going back to his chair wrote 'Ugus' a third time with a third pen; and then, in order to think the more clearly, laid his hand upon the table and closed his eyes.

It was Mrs. Barnes's hand upon his shoulder, some three hours afterwards, which roused him from his so deep reflections, and to a man in Wogan's course of life the shoulder is a most sensitive member. She took the paper, whereon the great name was thrice inscribed, very daintily between her forefinger and thumb, as though she touched pitch; folded it once, twice, thrice, and set it on the mantelshelf. There Mr. Kelly, coming into the room for breakfast, discovered it, hummed a little to himself like a man well pleased, and turned over the leaf to see what was written t'other side.

'That is all,' said Wogan, indifferently.

'And it is a very good night's work,' replied Kelly, with the politest gravity, 'not a letter--and there are precisely twelve of them in all--but is writ with scrupulous correctness. Such flourishes, too, are seldom seen. I cannot call to mind that ever I saw a g so pictorially displayed. Ugus--Ugus--Ugus--' and he held the paper out at arm's length.

'I went no further with my work,' explained Wogan, 'because I reflected--'

'What, again?' asked the Parson in a voice of condolence.

'That the mere enunciation of the name Ugus gives an epitome of the Wogan family.'

'Indeed, it gives a history in full,' said the Parson.

'It comprises--'

'Nay, it conveys--'

'All that need be known of the Wogan family.'

'All that need be known, indeed, and perhaps more,' added George with the air of a man turning a compliment Mr. Wogan was sensibly flattered, and took his friend's words as an apology for that disrespect which he had shown towards Thomas Wogan two days before, and the pair seated themselves to breakfast in the best of good humour.

'We start at nine of the evening,' said George. 'I have commanded a sober suit of grey cloth for you, Nick, since you cannot squeeze into my coats, and it should be here by now. Meanwhile, I leave you to Mrs. Barnes's attentions.'

Of these attentions Mrs. Barnes was by no means sparing. For the buxom widow of the bookseller, who, to her credit be it said, had her full share of good looks, joined to an admirable warmth of heart a less adorable curiosity. With the best intentions in the world for her lodgers' security, she was always prying into their secrets. Nor did she always hold her tongue outside her own doors, as Mr. Kelly had bitter reason afterwards to know. In a word, she had all the inquisitiveness of her class, and sufficient wiles to make that inquisitiveness difficult to parry. Not that Nicholas Wogan was at all troubled upon this score, for if there was one quality upon which the good man prided himself, it was his comprehension of the sex. 'Woman,' he would say with a sententious pursing of the lips and a nod of the head; and again 'woman,' and so drop into silence; as who should say, 'Here's a nut I could show you the kernel of were I so disposed.'

This morning, however, Mrs. Barnes made no demand upon Wogan's cunning. For she took the paper with the thrice iterated Ugus which the Parson had replaced upon the mantelshelf, and, with the same gingerly precautions as she had used in touching it before, dropped it into the fire.

'And why that?' asked Wogan.

Mrs. Barnes flung out at him in reply.

'I have no patience with you,' she cried. 'What's Ugus, Mr. Wogan? Answer me that,' and she struck her arms akimbo. 'What's Ugus but one of your cypher words, and you must needs stick it up on your mantelshelf for all the world to see?'

'It's no cypher word at all,' replied Wogan with a laugh.

'What is it then?' said she.

'My dear woman, the merest mare's nest,' said he.

'Oh, you may "dear woman" me,' cried she, and sat herself down in a chair, 'and you may laugh at a woman's fears; but, good lack, it was a bad day when Mr. Kelly first found a lodging here. What with his plottings here and his plottings there, it will be a fortunate thing if he doesn't plot us all into our graves.'

'Whisht,' interrupted Wogan. 'There are no plots at all, any more than there's sense in your talk.'

But the woman's eloquence was not so easily stemmed.

'Then if there are no plots, why is Mr. Kelly "Mr. Johnson," why is Mr. Wogan "Mr. Hilton"; and why, oh why, am I in danger of my life and liberty, and in peril of my immortal soul?'

'Sure you are bubbled with your fears, answered Wogan. 'It is sufficiently well known that since Mr. George Kelly ceased to minister to souls he has adopted the more lucrative profession of a lace merchant. There's some secrecy no doubt in his comings and goings, but that is because he is most honourably engaged in defrauding the revenue.'

'A pretty lace merchant, upon my soul,' said she, and she began to rock her body to and fro. The sight alarmed Nicholas Wogan, since he knew the movement to be a premonition of tears. 'A lace merchant who writes letters in Latin, and rides in the Bishop of Rochester's coach, and goes a-visiting my Lord Oxford in the country. Thirteen shillings have I paid for letters in one day. Laces, forsooth! It is hempen ropes the poor gentleman travels in, and never was a man so eager to fit them to his own neck.' And, at the affecting prospect which her words called up, the good woman lifted her apron to her eyes and forthwith dissolved into tears. Sobs tore her ample bosom, her soft frame quivered like a jelly. Never did Mr. Wogan find his intimate knowledge of the sex of more inestimable value. He crossed the room; he took one plump hand into his left palm and gently cherished it with his right. The tears diminished to a whimpering. He cooed a compliment into Mrs. Barnes's ear, 'A little white dove of a hand in a brown nest, my dear woman,' said he, and affectionately tweaked her ear. Even the whimpering ceased, but ceased under protest! For Mrs. Barnes began to speak again. Wogan, however, kissed the tearful eyes and sealed them in content.

'Hoity-toity, here's a set out,' he said, 'because my Lord Oxford wants a pair of Venice ruffles to hide his gouty fingers, or a new mantilla for his new spouse,' and so, softly chiding her, he pushed her out of the room.

At nine o'clock to the minute the chaise drove up to the door. Mr. Kelly took a stroll along the street to see the coast was clear; Mrs. Barnes was in two minds whether to weep at losing her lodgers, or to smile at their prospects of security, and compromised between her emotions by indulging them alternately; and finally the two friends in burgess dress entered the chaise and drove off. Mr. Wogan thrust his head half out of the window, the better to take his fill of the cool night air, but drew it back something of the suddenest at the corner where Ryder Street debouches into St. James's.

'Sure the man's a spy,' said he, flinging himself back. Parson Kelly leaned cautiously forward, and under an oil-lamp above the porch of a door he saw Captain Montague. The Captain was standing in an indecisive attitude, tapping with his stick upon the pavement and looking up and down the street.

'I doubt it,' returned Kelly. 'I have ever heard he was the most scrupulous gentleman.'

'But he's a Whig. A Whig and a gentleman! But it's a contradiction in terms. Whigging is a nasty insupportable trade, and infects a man like a poison. A Whig is a sort of third sex by itself that combines all the failings of the other two.'

However, this time it was evident that Captain Montague had taken no note of Nicholas Wogan. He could not but reflect how it was at this very spot that he had come upon the captain before, and mighty glad he was when the lights of Knightsbridge had sunk behind them, and they were driving betwixt the hedgerows. Then at one spring he jumped to the top of his spirits.

'George, what a night!' cries he. 'Sure I was never designed to live in a house at all, but to be entirely happy under the blue roof-tree of the sky. Put me out on a good road at night and the whole universe converses with me on the most familiar terms. Perhaps it's a bush that throws out a tendril and says, "Smell that, you devil, and good luck to you." Or, maybe it's the stars that wink at me and say, "Here's a world for you, Nick, my little friend. Only wait a moment, and we'll show you a bit of a moon that'll make a poet of you." Then up comes the moon, perhaps, in a crescent like a wisp of fire, and, says she, "It's all very well here, Nicholas, but take my word for it, I can show you as good on the sea and better. For you'll have all this, and the hiss of the water under your lee besides, and the little bubbles dancing on the top." But what troubles you, George?'

But Kelly made little or no reply, being sunk in the consideration of some difficulty. For two days he remained closeted with his trouble, and it was not until they had got to Worcester that he discovered it. They changed horses at the 'Dog and Turk' and drove through the town under the Abbey clock.

'It is five minutes to twelve,' said Wogan, looking at the clock.

'Yes,' said Kelly with a sigh, 'the face is very plain to read.' Then he sighed again.

'Now, if the clock were a woman,' said he, 'it might be half-past four and we still thinking it five minutes to twelve.'

'Oh, is it there you are?' said Wogan.

'Why, yes,' replied Kelly. 'Lord Oxford, do you see, Nick, is a half-hearted sort of trembler--that we know and are ready for him. But what of my lady?'

Wogan crossed his legs and laughed comfortably. Here was matter with which he could confidently deal.

'Well, what of her?' he asked.

'You heard what Fanny Oglethorpe said. She is a kinswoman of Mr. Walpole's. How shall we be sure of her at all? A woman, Nick, is a creature who walks in the byways of thought. How shall an obtuse man follow her?'

Wogan took a pinch of snuff.

'It is very well, George,' said he, 'that I took this journey with you. I'll make your conduct plain to you as the palm of my hand. In the first place, there was never a woman yet from Cleopatra downwards that cared the scrape of a fiddle for politics. 'Twas never more than a path that led to something else, and is held of just as small account as the road a girl dances down when she goes to meet her lover. Look at Fanny Oglethorpe, Olive Trant, and the rest of them in Paris! D'you think it's the Cause they ever give a thought to? If you do you're sadly out, my friend. No; what troubles their heads is simply that the Chevalier is a romantical figure of a man, and would look extraordinarily well with a gold crown on the top of his periwig. Now I'm wagering it will be just the same with my Lady Oxford. You have all the qualifications down to your legs, and let my lady once take a liking to your person she will gulp your politics without a grimace.'

Mr. Kelly turned a startled face towards his instructor.

'You would have me pay court to her?' says he.

'Just that,' says Wogan, imperturbably. 'Keep your politics for my lord and have a soft word ready for my lady. Pen her a delicate ode in Latin. To be sure the addresses of an erudite man have something particularly flattering to the sex. Or drop out a pretty compliment on her ear.'

'Oh, on her ear?' said Kelly, beginning to smile. 'Of what sort?'

'Faith, George, but you exasperate me,' said Nick. 'Isn't there an infinity of images you could use? For instance--,' said he, and hummed a little.

'Well, for instance!' said Kelly, urging him on.

'For instance,' returned Wogan, 'you can speak of its functions--'

'I understand. I am to tell her that it is a very proper thing for a woman to sit and listen to other people.'

'Tell her that,' cries Wogan, lifting up his hands, 'and you will be drubbed down the staircase pretty quick! No. Tell her there is never a poet laureate in the world would print a single one of his poems if he could treasure his music within her ear.'

'Ah,' says Kelly. 'That is a compliment of quite a different kind,' and he repeated it three times to commit it to memory. 'But one, Nick, will not suffice. I must have more sayings about her ear.'

'And you shall,' says Wogan. 'You can speak of its appearance.'

'Of its appearance?'

'And fit a simile to it.'

'Give me one,' said Kelly.

'You can say her ear is like a rosy shell on the sea-banks.'

Mr. Kelly began to laugh outright.

'Sure,' said he, 'I might as well tell her at once her hair is sandy.'

'Oh, she will not examine your words so nicely. She will just perceive that you intend a compliment.'

'And take me for a very impertinent fellow.'

'George' said Wogan, 'for a parson you are a man of a most unnatural modesty.' In which remark Wogan did his friend no more than the merest justice. For he had nothing in common with that usual foible of the young chaplains and tutors who frequent the houses of the great.

To listen to them over a bottle you would think them conquerors of all hearts, from the still-room maid to my lady and her daughters. But Mr. Kelly was in a different case. The Bishop of Rochester himself gave him the character of being prudent and reserved beyond his years. And perhaps it was by reason of that very modesty that he slid insensibly into the thoughts of more women than he knew of. Of these, however, Lady Oxford was not one.

It was about three in the afternoon of the next day when the chaise drove up to the door of the great house at Brampton Bryan. The Parson and Nicholas Wogan had barely stepped into the hall before an inner door opened and my lady came forward to greet them. She was for her sex uncommonly tall, and altogether of a conquering beauty, which a simple country dress did but the more plainly set forth. For, seeing her, one thought what a royal woman she would look if royally attired, and so came to a due appreciation of her consummate appearance. Whereas, had she been royally attired, her dress might have taken some of the credit of her beauty. She stood for a second between the two men, looking from one to the other as though in doubt.

'And which is Mr. James Johnson? 'said she, with a sly emphasis upon the name.

'I am,' said George, stepping forward, 'and your Ladyship's humble servant.'

She gave him a smile and her hand. Mr. Kelly clicked his heels together, bent over the hand and kissed it reverentially.

The lady sighed a quick little sigh (of pleasure) as she drew her hand away.

'I have taken the liberty, your Ladyship,' said Kelly, 'to bring my secretary, Mr. Hilton, with me,' and he waved a hand towards Wogan.

'Mr. Hilton,' she returned, 'is very welcome. For, indeed, we hear too few voices in the house.' She bowed very graciously, but she did not give her hand to Mr. Wogan. 'Gentlemen,' she continued, 'my lord bids me make you his apologies, but he lies abed. Else would he have welcomed you in person.'

'Your Ladyship,' said Kelley, 'if we come at an inopportune time--'

'By no means,' interrupted Lady Oxford. 'My lord is troubled with the gout, but the fit is passing. And if for a couple of days my poor hospitality will content you--'

'Your Ladyship,' protested Kelly, but that was all he said. Now, to Mr. Wogan's thinking, here was as timely an occasion for a compliment as a man could wish. And since Mr. Kelly had not the tact to seize it, why, his friend must come to his help. Accordingly,

'So might the holy angels apologise when they open the gates of Paradise,' said Wogan with his hand on his heart, and bowed. As he bowed he heard some stifled sounds, and he looked up quickly. My lady was crimson in the face with the effort to check her laughter.

'Mr. Hilton is too polite,' said she instantly, with an elaborate courtesy, and turned again to Kelly with some inquiries about his journey. Wogan was shown up the stairs before the inquiries were answered. The staircase ran round the three sides of the hall up to a landing on the fourth, and as Wogan came to the first turn he saw Lady Oxford cross to the great wood fire which was burning on the hearth; when he came to the second he saw that the Parson had crossed too and stood over against her; when he reached the third turn, my lady was seated toasting a foot at the blaze; when he reached the landing, Mr. Kelly had drawn up a chair.

Wogan leaned for a moment over the balustrade. It was a very small foot with an admirably arched instep; Mr. Wogan had seen the like in Spain. Well, very likely she only thrust it out to warm it. The firelight coloured her face to a pretty rose hue, sparkled in her dark eyes, and searched out the gold threads in her brown hair. Mr. Wogan was much tempted to whisper a reminder to his friend concerning her ear. But he resisted the temptation, for after all it seemed there would be little to do about my lady's politics.

CHAPTER IV

[SHOWS THE EXTREME DANGER OF KNOWING LATIN]

An hour later the three sat down to dinner, though, for all the talking that one of them did, there might have been present only the two whom Wogan had left chatting in the hall. It was not that Lady Oxford omitted any proper courtesy towards Mr. Johnson's secretary, but the secretary himself, sensible that he was something too apt to say in all companies just what came into his head, was careful to keep his tongue in a strict leash, lest an inconvenient word should slip from him. His deficiency, however, was not remarked. Lady Oxford was young, and for all that my lord lay upstairs in a paroxysm of the gout, she was in the highest feather; she rattled from course to course, plying Mr. Kelly with innumerable questions as to the latest tittle-tattle of the tea-parties, and whether Lady Mary Wortley and Mr. Pope were still the best of friends.

'Then your Ladyship is acquainted with Lady Mary?' says Kelly, looking up with some eagerness. For Lady Mary, then a toast among the wits and a wit among the toasts, was glanced at by some tongues as if, being sister to the Duchess of Mar, she was not of the most loyal to the Elector. The Duke of Mar was still Secretary to King James over the water.

'Without doubt,' returned Lady Oxford. 'Lady Mary is my bosom friend. The dear malicious creature! What is her latest quip? Tell me, Mr. Johnson, I die to hear it. Or rather whisper it. It will be too deliciously cruel for loud speaking. Lady Mary's witticisms, I think, should always be spoken in a low voice, with a suggestive nod and a tap of the forefinger on the table, so that one may not mistake where the sting lies. Not that the sayings are in themselves at all clumsy--how could they be, when she has such clever friends? But they gain much from a mysterious telling of them. You agree with me?'

It was evident that Lady Oxford wasted no love on Lady Mary, and Kelly's face fell.

'Your ladyship,' he replied, 'though I have no claims to be considered clever, I have the honour to be ranked amongst her friends.'

'Indeed!' said she with a light laugh at the rebuff. 'No doubt you have brought her some of your laces and brocades from France, Mr.--Johnson.' She paused slyly upon the name.

Kelly glanced quickly at her, their eyes met, and the lady laughed. There could be no doubt that she knew something of Kelly's business. Indeed, she would hardly have asked him for the fashionable gossip at all had she taken him for just what he represented himself to be. Wogan put his foot on his friend's pretty heavily, and, he knows not how, encountered her ladyship's. To his horror, Lady Oxford made a moan of pain. Kelly starts up in a hurry.

'Your ladyship is unwell,' says he, and bids the servant bring a bottle of salts.

'No,' she replied with a smile on her lips and her eyes full of tears, 'but your secretary has dropped a blot on the wrong paper.'

'Your ladyship,' cried Wogan in an extremity of confusion, 'it was the most miserable accident, believe me. A spasm in the leg, madam, the consequence of a sabre cut across the calf,' he explained, making the matter worse.

'Oh, and in what battle was Mr. Johnson's secretary wounded?' she said, taking him up on the instant.

'In a struggle with the Preventive men,' replied Wogan hurriedly, and he too broke off with a wry face, for Mr. Johnson was warning him and with no less vigour. Before he knew what he was doing Wogan had stooped down and begun to rub his leg. Lady Oxford's smile became a laugh.

'To be sure,' said she, 'and I think Mr. Johnson must have been wounded too, in just that same way, and in just that same encounter.'

'Faith, madam,' said Kelly, 'the smuggling trade is a hard one. No man engages in it but sooner or later he gets a knock that leaves its mark.'

Lady Oxford expressed the profoundest sympathy with a great deal of disbelief; and when her ladyship left her guests to their wine, they looked at one another across the table.

'Well,' said Wogan cheerfully, 'if my Lady Oxford is in Mr. Walpole's interest we have not made the best beginning in the world,' and in a little he went off to smoke a pipe in the stables.

Kelly withdrew to the great library, and had not been there many minutes before Lady Oxford came in. It seemed she did not see him at the first, although he sat bent up over the fire and his shadow huge upon the walls. Mr. Kelly certainly did not remark her entrance. For one thing, he was absorbed in his book; for another, the carpet was thick and the lady's step of the lightest. She went first to the bookcase, then she crossed the room and shuffled some papers on a table, then she knocked against a chair, the chair knocked against the table, and at the noise Kelly looked up. He rose to his feet. Lady Oxford turned round, started, and uttered a sharp little cry.

'My lady,' began Mr. Kelly.

'Oh, it is you, Mr. Johnson,' she broke in with a hand to her heart, and dropped into the chair. 'I believe,' she said with a broken laugh, 'I was foolish enough to be frightened. I fancied you had gone with your friend to the stables,' which was as much as to say that she knew he had not. Kelly commenced an apology for so disordering her, but she would not listen to it.

'No,' she said, 'it is I that am to be blamed. Indeed, such stupid fears need chiding. But in a house so lonely and silent they grow on one insensibly. Indeed, I have known the mere creak of the stairs keep me awake in terror half the night.'

She spoke with the air of one gently railing at her own distress, but shivered a little to prove the distress genuine, and Kelly, as he looked at her, felt a sudden pang of pity.

'Your place, my lady, is not here,' he cried, 'but in the Mall, at the Spring Gardens, in the lighted theatres, when even your ladyship's own sex would pay you homage for outrivalling them.'

'Nay,' she replied, with the sweetest smile of reproof, 'you go too fast, Mr. Johnson. My place is here, for here my duty lies.' She looked up to the ceiling with a meek acceptance of the burden laid upon her fair shoulders. 'But I am not come to disturb you,' she continued briskly; 'I came to fetch a book to read aloud to my lord.' At that a sigh half broke from her and was caught back as it were upon her lips. 'Perhaps, Mr. Johnson,' she said in a well-acted flurry, 'you will help me in the selection?'

'With all the heart in the world,' said he, laying down his volume. The choice took perhaps longer than need have been, for over each book there was some discussion. This one was too trivial to satisfy my Lord Oxford's weighty mind; that other was too profound to suit his health. 'And nothing too contentious, I implore you, lest it throw him into a heat,' she prayed, 'for my lord has a great gift of logic, and will argue with you by the hour over the merest trifle.' This with another half-uttered sigh, and so the martyr sought her lord's bedside. It appeared, however, that Lord Oxford was sleepy that night, or had no mind for the music of his lady's voice, for in a very little while she returned to the library and Mr. Kelly, where Wogan presently found them discussing in a great animation the prospects of Mr. Law's ventures.

'You are in for a great stake?' she asked.

'For all I have,' replied Kelly, 'and a little more. It is not a great sum.'

'But may become one,' said she, 'and will if a friend's good wishes can at all avail.' And so she wished her guests good night.

The next morning Lord Oxford sent a message that he was so far recovered as would enable him to receive his visitors that afternoon. Meanwhile Lady Oxford, after breakfast carried off the two gentlemen to visit a new orchard she was having planted. The orchard was open to the south-west, and Kelly took objection to its site, quoting Virgil in favour of a westerly outlook.

'Ah, but the west wind,' she said, 'comes to us across the Welsh mountains, which even in the late spring are at times covered deep in snow. However, I should be pleased to hear the advice of Virgil,' and the Parson goes off to the library and fetches out a copy.

It was a warm day in April, with the sky blue overhead and the buds putting out on the trees, and for the most part of that morning Mr. Kelly translated the Georgics to her ladyship, on a seat under a great yew-tree, in a little square of grass fenced off with a hedge. She listened with an extraordinary complaisance, and now and then a compliment upon the Parson's fluency; so that Mr. Wogan lost all his apprehensions as to her meddling in the King's affairs. For, to his thinking, than listening to Virgil, there was no greater proof of friendship.

Nor was it only upon this occasion that she gave the proof. Lord Oxford was a difficult man from his very timidity, and the Parson's visit was consequently protracted. His lordship needed endless assurances as to the prospects of a rising on behalf of King James, before he would hazard a joint of his little finger to support it. Who would take the place of the Royal Swede? Could the French Regent be persuaded to lend any troops or arms or money, or even to wink? Had the Czar been approached? Indeed he had, by Wogan's brother Charles. And what office would my Lord Oxford hold when James III. was crowned? Each day saw these questions reiterated and no conclusion come to. Lady Oxford was never present at these discussions; the face of her conduct was a sedulous discretion. It is true that after a little she dropped the pretence of laces, and, when the servants were not present, styled the Parson 'Mr. Kelly.' But that was all. 'These are not women's matters,' she would say with a pretty humility, and then rise like a queen and sail out of the room. Mr. Wogan might have noticed upon such occasions that the Parson hesitated for a little after she had gone, and spoke at random, as though she had carried off some part of his mind from affairs with the waft of her hoop. But he waited on the lady's dispositions and set down what he saw of his friend's conduct at the time as merely the consequence of an endeavour to enlist her secrecy and good-will.

These councils with Lord Oxford took place, as a rule, in the afternoon, his lordship being a late riser, and even when risen capable only of sitting in a chair, with a leg swathed in a mountain of flannel. So that, altogether, Mr. Kelly had a deal of time upon his hands, and doubtless would have found it hang as heavy as Nick Wogan did, but for the sudden interest he took in Lady Oxford's new orchard. He would spend hours over the 'Observations on Modern Gardening,' and then,

'Nick,' he would cry,' there's no life but a country life. One wakes in the morning, and the eye travels with delight over the green expanse of fields. One makes friends with the inanimate things of nature. Nick, here one might re-create the Golden Age.'

'To my mind,' says Nick, 'but for the dogs and horses it would be purely insupportable. With all the goodwill in the world I cannot make friends with a gatepost, and I'm not denying I shall be mightily glad when the wambling old sufferer upstairs brings his mind at last to an anchor.'

But the Parson was already lost in speculation, and would presently wake to ask Wogan's opinion as to whether a Huff-cap pear was preferable to a Bar-land. To which he got no answer, and so, snatching up his Virgil, would go in search of Lady Oxford. He acquired, indeed, a most intimate knowledge of apples and pears, and would discourse with her ladyship upon the methods of planting and grafting as though he had been Adam, and she Flora, or, rather, our mother Eve, before the apple was shared between them. For apples the store, the hayloe-crab, the brandy-apple, the red-streak, the moyle, the foxwhelp, the dymock-red; for pears the squash pear, the Oldfield, the sack-pear, never a meal passed but one of these names cropped up at the table and was bandied about between Kelly and her ladyship like a tennis-ball. Now all this, though dull, was none the less reassuring to Wogan, who saw very clearly that Lady Oxford was altogether devoted to country pursuits, and wisely inferred that while there might result confusion in the quality of the pears, there would be the less disorder in the affairs of the Chevalier.

Moreover, her ladyship's inclination towards Mr. Kelly plainly increased. He translated the whole of the second book of the Georgics to her, five hundred and forty-two mortal lines of immortal poetry, and she never winced. Nor did she cry halt at the end of them, but, thereafter, listened to the Eclogues; and, all at once, their conversation was sprinkled with Melibœus and Mœris, and Lycidas and Mopsus, and Heaven knows what other names. Mr. Wogan remembers very well coming upon them one wet afternoon in the hall when it was growing dark. The lamps had not been lit, and Kelly had just finished reading one of the pastorals by the firelight. Lady Oxford sat with her hands clasped upon her knees, and, as he closed the book,

'Oh for those days,' she cried, 'when a youth and a maid could roam barefoot over the grass in simple woollen garments! But now we must go furbelowed and bedecked till there's no more comfort than simplicity,' and she smoothed her hand over her petticoat with a great contempt for its finery. Lady Mary Wortley, to whom Wogan related this saying afterwards, explained that doubtless her ladyship had laced her stays too tight that morning; but the two men put no such construction on her words, nor, indeed, did they notice a certain contradiction between them and Lady Oxford's anxiety for London gossip--the Parson, because he had ceased to do anything but admire; Wogan, because a little design had suddenly occurred to him.

It was Lady Oxford's patience under the verses which put it into Wogan's head. For since she endured to listen to poetry about trees and shepherds, poetry about herself must be a sheer delight to her. So, at all events, he reasoned, not knowing that Lady Oxford had already enjoyed occasion to listen to poetry about herself from Lady Mary's pen, which was anything but a delight. Accordingly he hinted to his friend that a little ode might set a firm seal upon her friendliness.

'Make her a Dryad in one of the trees of her own orchard, d'ye see?' he suggested; 'something pretty and artful, with sufficient allusions to her beauty. Who knows but what she may be so flattered as to carry the verses against her heart; and so, when some fine day she brings her husband's secrets to Mr. Walpole, she may hear the paper crackling against her bodice, and turn back on the very doorstep.'

'She will carry no secrets,' replied Kelly with a huff. 'She is too conscious of her duties. Besides, she knows none. Have you not seen her leave the room the moment politics are so much as hinted of?'

'True,' said Wogan. 'But what's her husband for except to provide her with secrets when they are alone to which she cannot listen without impertinence in company?'

Kelly moved impatiently away. He stood with a foot upon the fender, turning over the pages of his Virgil.

'You allow her no merit whatsoever,' he said slowly with a great gentleness.

'Indeed, but I do,' replied Wogan. 'I allow that she will be charmed by your poetry, and that's a rare merit. She will find it as soothing as a soldier does a pipe of tobacco after a hard day's fighting.'

'I would not practise on her for the world,' says Kelly with just the same gentleness, and goes softly out by the door.

Wogan, however, was troubled by no such delicate scruples. An ode must be written, even if he had to write it himself. He slapped his forehead as the notion occurred to him. The ode might be dropped as though by accident at some spot where her ladyship's eyes could not fail to light on it. Wogan heaved a deep breath, took a turn across the room, and resolved on the heroical feat. He would turn poet to help his friend. For two nights he fortified himself with the perusal of Sir John Suckling's poems, and the next morning took pencil and paper into the garden. He walked along the terrace, and seated himself on the bench beneath the yew-tree. Wogan sucked strenuously at his pencil.

'Strephon to his Smilinda, running barefoot over the grass in a gale of wind,' he wrote at the top, and was very well pleased with the title. By noonday he had produced a verse, and was very well pleased with that, except, perhaps, that the last line halted. The verse ran as follows:--

Nay, sweet Smilinda, do not chide
The wind that wantons with thy hair;
The grass will all his prickles hide
Nor harm thy snowy feet and bare.
And, listen, the enamoured air
Makes lutestrings of thy locks so fair.
At night the stars are mirrors which reflect
Thine eyes: at least that is what I expect.

Mr. Wogan spent an hour and three pipes of tobacco over his unwonted exercise, which brought him into a great heat.

Having finished the verse he blew out his cheeks and took a rest from his labours. It was a fine spring morning, and the sun bright as a midsummer day. To his right the creepers were beginning to stretch their green tendrils over the red bricks of the garden wall. To his left half-a-dozen steps led up to a raised avenue of trees. Wogan looked down the avenue, noted the border of spring flowers, and a flash of a big window at the extreme end; and in all the branches the birds sang. The world seemed all together very good, and his poem quite apiece with the world. Wogan stretched his arms and kicked out his feet. His feet struck against something hard in a tuft of grass. He stooped down and picked it up. It was Kelly's Virgil. The book was open, and the pages all blotted and smeared with the dew. It had evidently lain open on the grass by the bench all night. Wogan wiped the covers dry, and, using it as a desk, settled himself to the composition of his second verse. He had not, however, thought of an opening for it before a voice hailed him from behind.

He turned round and saw Kelly coming towards him from the direction of the orchard, and at that moment the opening of his verse occurred to him; Strephon offered to Smilinda his heart's allegiance. Wogan set his pencil to the paper, fearful lest he should forget the line.

'Nick,' cries Kelly, waving a bundle of letters, and starts to run. Wogan slipped his paper between the leaves of the book; just as he did so, Strephon, in return for his heart's 'allegiance,' asked for Smilinda's soft 'obedience.'

'Nick,' cries Kelly again, coming up to the bench, 'what d'you think?'

'I think, 'says Wogan, 'that interruption is the true source of inspiration.'

'What do you mean?' asked Kelly, looking at Wogan's pencil.

'I mean,' says Wogan, looking at the cover of the book, 'that if I lived by my poetry, I would hire a man to rap at my door all day long.'

Kelly, however, had no ears for philosophy.

'Nick,' says he, 'will you listen to me, if you please? I have a letter from Miss Oglethorpe. It explains--'

'Yes,' interposed Wogan thoughtfully. 'It explains why the best poets are ever those who are most dunned by their creditors.'

Kelly snatched the Virgil out of Wogan's hand, and threw it on to the grass. The book opened as it fell. It opened at the soiled pages, and it was behind those pages that Wogan had slipped his poem.

'You are as contrarious as a woman. Here am I, swollen with the grandest news, and you must babble about poets and creditors. Nick, there'll be few creditors to dun you and me for a bit. Just listen, will you?'

He leaned his elbows on the back of the bench, and read from his letter. It was to the effect that, during April, an edict had been published in France, transferring to Mr. Law's company of the West the exclusive rights of trading to the East Indies and the South Seas.

'Think of it, Nick!' he cried. 'The actions have risen from 550 livres to 1,000, and we are as yet at the budding of May. Why, man, as it is we are well to do. Just imagine that, if you can, you threadbare devil! We shall be rich before August.'

'We shall dine off silver plates in September!' cries Nick, leaping up in the contagion of his friend's good spirits..

'And drink out of diamond cups in November,' adds Kelly, dropping at once into the Irish accent.

'Bedad!' shouts Wogan, 'I'll write my poetry on beaten gold,' and he sprang on to the seat.

'You shall,' replies Kelly; 'and your ink shall be distilled out of black pearls.'

'Sure, George, one does not write on gold with ink, but with a graving tool.'

'This nonsense, and poetry, are what the lucky heart sings,' said Kelly.

'To a tune of clinking coins,' said Wogan. He stooped down to his friend. 'Have it all in solid gold, and tied up in sacks,' said he earnestly. 'None of their bills of exchange, but crowns, and pieces of eight, and doubloons, and guinea-pieces; and all tied up in sacks.'

'What will we do with it?' asked Kelly.

'Why, sit on the sacks,' replied Nick, and then grew silent. He looked at Kelly. Kelly looked away to the garden-wall.

'Ah!' said the Parson, with a great start of surprise. 'There's a lizard coming out of the bricks to warm himself,' and he made a step away from the bench. Wogan's hand came quickly down upon his shoulder.

'George,' said he, 'I think we are forgetting something. Not a farthing of it is mine at all.'

'Now, that's a damned scurvy ungenerous remark,' replied George. 'Haven't I borrowed half of your last sixpence before now?'

Wogan got down from the seat.

'Poverty may take a favour from poverty, George, and 'tis all very well.'

Kelly sat himself down on the bench, crossed his knees, and swung a leg to and fro.

'I don't want the money,' said he, with a snort.

'My philosophy calls it altogether an encumbrance,' said Wogan, sitting down by his side.

Kelly turned his back on Wogan, and stared at the garden-wall. Then he turned back.

'I know,' said he of a sudden, and smacks his hand down on Wogan's thigh. 'We'll give it to the King. He can do no more than spend it.'

'He will certainly do no less.' But they did not give it to the King.

Wogan was sitting turned rather towards the house, and as he looked down the avenue, he saw the great windows at the end open, and Lady Oxford come out.

'Here's her ladyship come for her Latin lesson,' said Wogan, and he rose from his seat.

'I'll tell her of our good fortune,' said Kelly, and he walked quickly to the steps at the end of the avenue. Lady Oxford stopped on the first step, with a hand resting on the stone balustrade. George Kelly stood on the grass at the foot of the steps, and told her of his news.

'The shares,' he ended, 'have risen to double value already.'

It seemed to Wogan that her eyes flashed suddenly with a queer, unpleasant light, and the hand which was resting idly on the balustrade crooked like the claws of a bird. He had seen such eyes, and such a hand, at the pharo tables in Paris.

'It is the best news I have heard for many a day,' she said the next instant, with a gracious smile, and coming down the steps, walked by Mr. Kelly's side towards the bench.

'And what will you do with it?' she asked. It was her first question, for she was a practical woman.

'In the first flush,' replied Kelly, hesitating as to how he should put the answer, 'we had a thought of disposing of it where it is sorely needed.'

She looked quickly at Kelly; as quickly looked away. She took a step to the seat with her eyes on the ground.

'Oh,' she observed slowly; 'you would give it away.' There was, perhaps, a trifle of a pucker upon her forehead, perhaps a shade of disappointment in her eyes. But it was all gone in a moment. She clasped her hands fervently together, raised her face to the heavens, her cheeks afire, her eyes most tender. 'Indeed,' she exclaimed, 'the noblest, properest disposition of it! Heaven dispense me more such friends who, in a world so niggardly, retain so ancient a spirit of generosity,' and she stood for a little, with her lips moving, as if in prayer. It was plain to Mr. Wogan that her ladyship had guessed the destination of the money. No such thought, however, troubled George Kelly, who was wholly engaged in savouring the flattery, and, from his appearance, found it very much to his taste.

'I would not, however, if a woman might presume to advise,' she continued, 'be in any great hurry to sell the shares. Though they have risen high, they will doubtless rise higher. And your gift, if you will but wait, in a little will grow worthier of the spirit which prompts it.'

'Madam,' returned Kelly, 'it is very prudent advice. I will be careful to follow it.'

Was it relief which showed for an instant in Lady Oxford's face? Kelly did not notice; Wogan could not tell; and a second afterwards an event occurred which wholly diverted his thoughts.

All three had been standing with their faces towards the garden-seat, the yew-tree and the orchard beyond, Lady Oxford between, and a little in advance of Kelly and Wogan, so that each saw her face obliquely over her shoulders. Now, however, she turned and sat down, giving thus her whole face to the two men; and both saw it suddenly blanch, suddenly flush as though all the blood had leaped from her heart into her cheeks, and then fade again to pallor. Terror widened and fixed her eyes, her lips parted, she quivered as though she had been struck a buffet across the face.

'Your ladyship--' began Kelly, and, noticing the direction of her gaze, he broke off his sentence, and turned him about. As he moved, Lady Oxford, even in the midst of her terror, stole a quick, conscious glance at his face.

'Sure, 'tis a predecessor to George,' thought Wogan; and he too turned about.

Some twenty paces away a man was waiting in an easy attitude. He was of the middle height, and, judged by his travelling dress and bearing, a gentleman. His face was thin, hard, and sallow of complexion, the features rather peaked, the eyes dark, and deepset beneath the brows. Without any pretension to good looks, the stranger had a certain sinister distinction--stranger, for that he was to the two men at this time, whatever he may have been to Lady Oxford. Yet George thought he had seen the man's eyes before, at Avignon, when the King was there; and Wogan later remembered his voice, perhaps at Genoa, which he had used much at one time. He stood just within the opening in the hedge, and must needs have come through the trees beyond, while Lady Oxford and her guests were discussing the Parson's good fortune.

As soon as he saw the faces turned towards him, he took off his hat, made a step forwards, and flourished a bow.

'Your ladyship's most humble and obedient servant.'

He laid a stress upon the word 'obedient,' and uttered it with a meaning smile. Lady Oxford returned his bow, but instinctively shifted her position on the bench towards Kelly, and timidly put out a hand as though she would draw him nearer.

The stranger took another step forwards. There was no change in his expression, but the step was perhaps more swiftly taken.

'Mr. George Kelly,' he said quietly, and bowed again. 'The Reverend Mr. George Kelly, I think,' and he bowed a third time, but lower, and with extreme gravity.

Wogan started as the stranger pronounced the name. Instantly the stranger turned to him.

'Ah,' said he, 'Captain Nicholas Wogan, I think,' and he took a third step. His foot struck in a tuft of grass, and he stumbled forward; he fell plump upon his knees. For a gentleman of so much dignity the attitude was sufficiently ridiculous. Wogan grinned in no small satisfaction.

'Sure, my unknown friend,' said he, 'I think something has tripped you up.'

'Yes,' said the stranger, and, as he stood up, he picked up a book from the grass.

'It is,' said he, 'a copy of Virgil.'

CHAPTER V

[A LITERARY DISCUSSION IN WHICH A CRITIC, NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, TURNS THE TABLES UPON AN AUTHOR]

Kelly frowned at Wogan, enjoining silence by a shake of the head. Her ladyship was still too discomposed to speak; she drew her breath in quick gasps; her colour still came fitfully and went. The only person entirely at ease in that company was the disconcerting stranger, and even behind his smiling mask of a face one was somehow aware of sleeping fires; and underneath the suave tones of his voice one somehow felt that there ran an implacable passion.

'Upon my word,' said he, 'I find myself for a wonder in the most desirable company. A revered clergyman, a fighting captain, a lady worthy of her quality, and a poet.' He tapped the Virgil as he spoke, and it fell open between his hands. His speech had been uttered with a provocative politeness, and since no one responded to the provocation, he continued in the same strain. 'The story of Dido'--the book was open at the soiled pages--'and all spluttered with tears.'

'It has lain open in the dew since yesterday,' interrupted Wogan.

'Tears no less because the night has shed them,' he replied; 'and indeed it is a sad story, though not all true as the poet relates it. For Dido had a gout-ridden husband hidden discreetly away in a dark corner of the Palace, and Æneas was no more than an army chaplain, though he gave himself out for a general.'

Kelly flushed at the words, and took half a step towards the speaker of them.

'It is very true, Mr. Kelly. A chaplain, my soul upon it, a chaplain. Didn't he invoke his religion when he was tired of the lady, and so sail away with a clear conscience? A very parsonical fellow, Mr. Kelly. O infelix Dido! he burst out, 'that met with an army chaplain, and so became food for worms before her time!'

He shut up the book with a bang, and, as ill-luck would have it, Mr. Wogan's poem peeped out from the covers as if in answer to his knock.

'Oho,' says he, 'another poet,' and he read out the dedication.

'Strephon to his Smilinda running barefoot in a gale of wind.'

Kelly laughed aloud, and a faint smile flickered for the space of a second about Lady Oxford's lips. Wogan felt his cheeks grow red, but constrained himself to a like silence with his companions. His opportunity would come later; meanwhile some knowledge was needed of who the stranger was.

'A pretty conceit,' resumed the latter, 'though consumption in its effects. Will the author pardon me?'

He took the sheet of paper in his hand, dropped the Virgil carelessly on the grass, and read out the verses with an absolute gravity which mocked at them more completely than any ridicule would have done. 'It breaks off,' he added, 'most appropriately just when the gentleman claims the lady's obedience. There is generally a break at that point. "At least, that is what I expect,"' he quoted. Then he looked at each of his two adversaries. For adversaries his language and their faces alike proved them to be. 'Now which is Strephon?' he asked, with an insinuating smile, as he calmly put the verses in his pocket. 'Is it the revered clergyman or the fighting captain?'

Kelly's face flushed darkly.

'The revered clergyman,' he broke in, and his voice shook a little, 'would be happy to be reminded of the occasion which brought him the honour of your acquaintance.'

'A sermon,' replied the stranger. 'I was much moved by a sermon which you preached in Dublin upon the text of "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's."'

Mr. Kelly could not deny that he had preached that sermon; and for all he knew the stranger might well have been among his audience. He contented himself accordingly with a bow. So Wogan stepped in.

'And the fighting captain,' he said, with a courtesy of manner no whit inferior to his questioner's, 'would be glad to know when he ever clapped eyes upon your honour's face, if you please.'

'Never,' answered the other with a bow. 'Captain Nicholas Wogan never in his life saw the faces of those who fought behind him. He had eyes only for the enemy.'

Now, Mr. Wogan had fought upon more than one field of which he thought it imprudent to speak. So he copied the Parson's example and bowed.

'Does her ladyship also wish to be reminded of the particulars of our acquaintance?' said the stranger, turning now to Lady Oxford. There was just a tremor, a hint of passion discernible in his voice as he put the question. Both Wogan and Kelly had been waiting for it, had restrained themselves to silence in the expectation of it. For only let the outburst come, and the man's design would of a surety tumble out on the top. Lady Oxford, however, suddenly interposed and prevented it. It may be that she, too, had caught the threatening tremble of his words, and dreaded the outburst as heartily as the others desired it. At all events, she rose from the bench as though some necessity had spurred her to self-possession.

'No, Mr. Scrope,' she said calmly, 'I do not wish to be reminded of our acquaintance either in particular or in general. It was a slight thing at its warmest, and I thank God none of my seeking. Mr. Kelly, will you give me your arm to the house?'

The stranger for a second was plainly staggered by her words. Kelly cast a glance at Wogan which the 'fighting captain' very well understood, offered his arm to Lady Oxford, and before the stranger recovered himself, the pair were up the steps and proceeding down the avenue.

'A slight thing!' muttered Mr. Scrope in a sort of stupor. 'God, what's a strong thing, then?' and at that the passion broke out of him. 'It's the Parson now, is it?' he cried. 'Indeed, Mr. Wogan, a parson is very much like a cat. Whether he throws his cassock over the wall, or no, it is still the same sly, soft-footed, velvety creature, with a keen eye for a soft lap to make his bed in,' and with an oath he started at a run after Kelly. Wogan, however, ran too, and he ran the faster. He got first to the steps, sprang to the top of them, and turned about, just as Mr. Scrope reached the bottom.

'Wait a bit, my friend!' said Wogan.

'Let me go, if you please,' said Mr. Scrope, mounting the lowest step.

'You and I must have a little talk first.'

'It will be talk of a kind uncommon disagreeable to you,' said Mr. Scrope hotly, and he mounted the second step.

Wogan laughed gleefully.

'Why, that's just the way I would have you speak,' said he. Mr. Scrope stopped, looked over Wogan from head to foot, and then glanced past him up the avenue.

'I have no quarrel with you, Mr. Wogan,' he said politely, and took the third step.

'And have you not?' asked Wogan. 'I'm thinking, on the contrary, that you took exception to my poetry.'

'Was the poetry yours? Indeed, I did not guess that,' he replied. 'But the greatest of men may yet be poor poets.'

'In this case you're mightily mistaken,' cried Wogan, and he stamped his foot and threw out his chest. 'I am my poetry.'

Mr. Scrope squinted up the avenue under Wogan's arm.

'Damn!' said he.

Wogan turned round; Parson Kelly and her ladyship were just passing through the window into the house. Wogan laughed, but a trifle too soon. For as he still stood turned away and looking down the avenue, Mr. Scrope took the last three steps at a bound, and sprang past him. Luckily as he sprang he hit against Wogan's shoulder, and so swung him round the quicker. Wogan just caught the man's elbow, jerked him back, got both his arms coiled about his body, lifted him off his feet, and flattened him up against his chest. Mr. Scrope struggled against the pressure; he was lithe and slippery like a fish, and his muscles gave and tightened like a steel spring. Wogan gripped him the closer, pinioning his arms to his side. In a little Scrope began to pant, and a little after to perspire; then the veins ridged upon his face, and his eyes opened and shut convulsively.

'Have you had enough, do you think?' asked Wogan; 'or shall I fall on you? But you may take my word for it, whatever you think of my love-poems, that I never yet fell on any man but something broke inside of him.'

Mr. Scrope was not in that condition which would enable him to articulate, but he seemed to gasp an assent, and Wogan put him down. He staggered backwards towards the house for a yard or two, leaned against one of the trees, and then, taking out his handkerchief, wiped his forehead; at the same time he walked towards the house, but with the manner of a man who is dizzy, and knows nothing of his direction.

'Stop!' cried Wogan.

Scrope stooped, and turned back carelessly, as though he had not heard the command. Indeed, he seemed even to have forgotten why he was out of breath.

'Mr. Wogan,' he said, 'I do not quite understand. It seems you write love-poems to her ladyship, and yet encourage the Parson to court her.'

Wogan was not to be drawn into any explanation.

'Let us leave her ladyship entirely out of the question. There's the value of my poetry to be argued out.'

Mr. Scrope bowed, and they walked down the steps side by side, and through the opening in the hedge. A path led through the trees, and they followed it until they came to an open space of sward. Wogan measured it across with his stride.

'A very fitting place for the argument, I think,' he said, and took off his coat.

'What? In Smilinda's garden?' asked Scrope easily. 'Within view of Smilinda's windows? Surely the common road would be the more convenient place.'

'Why, and that's true,' answered Wogan. 'It would have been an outrage.'

'No,' said Scrope, 'merely a flaw in the argument. This is the nearest way. At least, I think so,' and he turned off at an angle, passed through a shrubbery, and came out opposite a little postern-gate in the garden-wall.

'You know the grounds well,' said Wogan.

'It is my first visit,' replied Scrope, with a trace of bitterness, 'but I have been told enough of them to know my way.'

He stepped forward and opened the gate. Outside in the road stood a travelling chaise with a pair of horses harnessed to it.

'There is no one within view,' said Wogan. The road ran to right and left empty as far as the eye could reach; in front stretched the empty fields.

'No one,' said Mr. Scrope, and he looked up to the sky.

'Well, I would as lief take my last look at the sunlight as at anything else, and I doubt not it is the same with you.'

Wogan, in spite of himself, began to entertain a certain liking for the man. He had accepted each stroke of ill-fortune--his discomfiture at Lady Oxford's hands, the grapple on the steps, and now this duel--without disputation. Moreover Wogan was wondering whether or no the man had some real grievance against her ladyship and what motive brought him, in what expectation, in his chaise to Brampton Bryan. He felt indeed a certain compunction for his behaviour, and he said doubtfully,

'Mr. Scrope, you and I might have been very good friends in other circumstances.'

'I doubt it very much, Mr. Wogan.' Scrope shook his head and smiled. 'Your poetry would always have come between us. I would really sooner die than praise it.'

He looked up and down the road as he spoke, and then made an almost imperceptible nod at his coachman.

'That field opposite will do, I think,' Scrope said, and advanced from the doorway to the side of his chaise as though he was looking for something. It was certainly not his sword; Wogan now thinks it was his pistols. Wogan felt his liking increase and was inclined to put the encounter off for a little. It was for this reason that he stepped forward and passed an arm through Scrope's just as the latter had set a foot on the step of the chaise, no doubt to search the better for what he needed.

'Now what's amiss with the poem?' asked Wogan in a friendly way.

'It is altogether too inconsequent,' replied Scrope with a sudden irritation for which Wogan was at a loss to account.

'But my dear man,' said he, 'it was not intended for a syllogism.'

Scrope took his foot off the step and turned to Wogan as though a new thought had sprung into his brain.

'Mr. Wogan,' he said, 'I shall have all the pleasure imaginable in pointing out the faults to you if you care to listen and have the leisure. Then if you kill me afterwards, why I shall have done you some slight service and perhaps the world a greater. If I kill you, on the other hand, why there's so much time wasted, it is true, but I am in no hurry.'

There was no escape from the duel; that Wogan knew. Mr. Scrope had insulted the Parson, Lady Oxford, and himself; he was aware besides that the Parson and Wogan, both of them at the best suspected characters, were visiting the Earl of Oxford; and he had, whether it was justified or no, a hot resentment against the Parson. He might, since he knew so much, know also more, as, for instance, the names under which the Parson and Wogan were hiding themselves. It would not in any case need a very shrewd guess to hit upon their business, and if Mr. Scrope got back safe to London, why he might make himself confoundedly unpleasant. Wogan ran through these arguments in his mind, and was brought to the conclusion that he must most infallibly kill Mr. Scrope; but at the same time a little of his company meanwhile could do no harm.

'Nor I,' replied Wogan accordingly. 'I shall be delighted to confute your opinions.'

Mr. Scrope bowed; it seemed as though his face lighted up for a moment.

'There is no reason why we should stand in the road,' he said, 'when we can sit in the chaise.'

'Very true,' answered Wogan.

Scrope mounted into the chaise. Wogan followed upon his heels. They sat down side by side, and Scrope pulled out the verses from his pocket. He read the dedication once more:

'Strephon to Smilinda running barefoot over the grass in a gale of wind.'

'Let me point out,' said he, 'that you have made the lady run barefoot at the very time when she would be most certain to put on her shoes and stockings. And that error vitiates the whole poem. For the wind is severe, you will notice. So when she reprimands the storm, she should really reprimand herself for her inconceivable folly.'

'But Smilinda has no shoes and stockings at all in the poem,' replied Wogan triumphantly.

'That hardly betters the matter,' returned Scrope. 'For in that case her feet might be bare but they would certainly not be snowy.'

He stooped down as he spoke and drew from under the seat a bottle of wine, which he opened.

'This,' he said, 'may help us to consider the poem in a more charitable light.'

He gave Wogan the bottle to hold, and stooping once more fetched out a couple of glasses. Then he held one in each hand.

'Now will you fill them?' he said. Wogan poured out the wine and while pouring it:

'Two glasses?' he remarked. 'It seems you came prepared for the conversation.'

Scrope raised his eyes quickly to Wogan's face, and dropped them again to the glasses.

'One might easily have been broken,' he explained.

They leaned back in the chaise, each with a glass in his hand.

'It is to your taste, I hope,' said Scrope courteously.

Wogan smacked his lips in contentment.

'Lord Oxford has no better in his cellars.'

'I may agree without boastfulness. It is indeed Florence of a rare vintage, which I was at some pains to procure.' He laughed with a spice of savagery and resumed the consideration of Wogan's verses.

'You seem to me to have missed the opportunity afforded by your gale of wind. A true poet would surely have made great play with the lady's petticoats.'

'Smilinda had none,' again replied Wogan in triumph, and he emptied his glass.

'No shoes and stockings and no petticoats,' said he in a shocked voice. 'It is well you wrote a poem about her instead of painting her portrait,' and he filled Wogan's glass again, and added a little to his own, which was no more than half empty.

'Don't you comprehend, my friend,' exclaimed Wogan, 'that Smilinda's a nymph, an ancient Roman nymph?'

'Oh, she's a nymph!'

'Yes, and so wears no clothes but a sort of linsey-wolsey garment kirtled up to her knees.'

'Well, let that pass. But here's a line I view with profound discontent. "The grass will all its prickles hide." Thistles have prickles, Mr. Wogan, but the grass has blades like you and me; only, unlike you and me, it has no scabbards to sheathe them in.'

'Well,' said Wogan, 'but that's very wittily said,' and he laughed and chuckled.

'It is not bad, upon my faith,' replied Scrope. 'Let us drink to it in full glasses.'

He emptied the bottle into Wogan's glass and tossed it into the road.

'Now here's something more. The wind, you observe, makes lutestrings of Smilinda's hair.'

'There is little fault to be discovered in that image, I fancy,' said Wogan, lifting his glass to his lips with a smile.

'It is a whimsical image,' replied Scrope. 'It is as much as to call her hair catgut.'

Wogan was startled by the criticism. He sat up and scratched his nose.

'Well, I had not thought of that,' he said. He was somewhat crestfallen, and he looked to his glass for consolation. The glass was empty; he looked on to the road where the empty bottle rolled in the dust.

'I have its fellow,' said Scrope, interpreting Wogan's glance. He produced a second bottle from the same place. The second bottle brought them to the end of the verse. There was, however, a little discussion over the last line, and a third bottle was broached to assist.

'"At least that is what I expect." It is a very vile line, Mr. Wogan.'

'It is, perhaps, not so good as the others,' Wogan admitted. 'But you must blame the necessities of rhyming.'

'But the art of the poet is to conceal such necessities,' answered Scrope. 'And observe, Mr. Wogan, you sacrifice a great deal here to get an accurate rhyme, but in the remaining two lines of the next verse you do not trouble your head about a rhyme at all.'

'Oh, let me see that!' said Wogan, holding out a hand for the paper. He had clean forgotten by this time what those two lines described.

'Allegiance, Mr. Wogan,' said Scrope, politely handing him the verses, 'is no rhyme to obedience.'

'Allegiance--obedience--obedience--allegiance,' repeated Wogan as clearly as he could. 'Nay, I think it's a very good rhyme.'

'Oh!' exclaimed Scrope in a sudden comprehension. 'If you tell me the verses are conceived in the Irish dialect, I have not another word to say.'

Now Mr. Wogan, as a rule, was a little touchy on the subject of his accent. But at this moment he had the better part of three bottles of admirable Florence wine under his belt and was so disposed to see great humour in any remark. He grew uproarious over Mr. Scrope's witticism.

'Sure, but that's the most delicate jest I have heard for months,' he cried. 'Conceived in the Irish dialect! Ho! Ho! I must tell it at the Cocoa Tree--though it hits at me,' and he stood up in the chaise. 'Obedience--allegiance.' Mr. Scrope steadied him by the elbow. 'Faith, Mr. Scrope, but you and I must have another crack one of these days.' He put a foot out on the step of the chaise. 'I love a man that has some warmth in his merriment--and some warmth in his bottle too.' He stepped out of the chaise on to the ground. 'The best Florence I have tasted--the best joke I have heard--the Irish dialect. Ha, ha!' and he waved a hand at Scrope. Scrope called quickly to the coachman; the next instant the chaise started off at a gallop.

Wogan was left standing in the road, shouting his laughter. When the coach chaise was some thirty yards away, however, his laughter stopped completely. He rubbed his hand once or twice over his bemused forehead.

'Stop!' he yelled suddenly, and began to run after the chaise. Scrope stood up and spoke to the driver. The horses slackened their pace until Wogan got within twenty yards of it. Then Scrope spoke again, and the coachman drove the horses just as fast as Wogan was running.

'You have forgotten something, my friend,' cries Wogan.

'And what's that?' asked Scrope pleasantly, leaning over the back of the chaise.

'You have forgotten the duel.'

'No,' shouted Scrope with a grimace. 'It is you that forgot that.'

'Ah, you cheese-curd!--you white-livered coward!' cried Wogan, 'and I taking you for a fine man--equal to myself--you chalky cheese-curd!' He quickened his pace; Scrope called to the coachman; the coachman whipped up his horses. 'Oh wait a bit till I come up with you. I'll eat you in your clothes.'

Wogan bounded along the road, screaming out every vile epithet he could lay his tongue to in the heat of the moment. His hat and wig fell off on the road; he did not stop, but ran on bareheaded.

'But listen, the enamoured air
Makes lutestrings of thy locks so fair,'

quoted Scrope, rubbing his hands with delight. Wogan's fury redoubled, he stripped off his coat and ran till the road grew dizzy and the air flashed sparks at him. But the chaise kept ever at the same distance. With this interval of twenty yards between them, chaise and Wogan dashed through the tiny street of Brampton Bryan. A horde of little boys tumbled out of the doors and ran at Wogan's heels. The more he cursed and raved, the more the little boys shouted and yelled. Scrope in the chaise shook with laughter, clapped his hands as if in commendation of Wogan's powers, and encouraged him to greater efforts. They passed out of the village; the children gave up the pursuit, and sent a few parting stones after Wogan's back; in front stretched the open road. Wogan ran half a mile further, but he was too heavily handicapped with his three bottles of wine, and Scrope's horses were fresh. He shouted out one last oath, and then in a final spasm of fury sat down by the roadside, stripped off his shoe, and springing into the middle of the road, hurled it with all his might at the retreating chaise. The shoe struck the top of the hood, balanced there for a moment, and bounced over on to the seat. Scrope took it up and waved it above his head.

'The grass will all its prickles hide,
Nor harm thy snowy feet and bare.'

The driver plied his whip; the chaise whirled out of sight in a cloud of dust; and the disconsolate Wogan hobbled back to Brampton Bryan with what secrecy he could.

Mr. Scrope was on his way with the road to London open, were he disposed to follow it. Mr. Wogan seemed to see his chaise flashing through the turnpikes, and his sallow cheeks taking on an eager colour as the miles were heaped behind him.

He knew that Mr. Kelly and Nicholas Wogan were at Lord Oxford's house at Brampton Bryan. He knew enough, therefore, to throw some disorder on the Chevalier's affairs were he disposed to publish his news. But not in that way did he take, at this time, his revenge upon the Parson.

CHAPTER VI

[MR. NICHOLAS WOGAN REMINDS THE PARSON OF A NIGHT AT THE MAZARIN PALACE]

While Wogan pursued in vain a flying foe, Lady Oxford and Parson Kelly waited in the house for his return, her ladyship in a great discomposure and impatience, and the Parson more silent than ordinary. Whatever he may have thought of Scrope's unexpected visit, his pride forbade him questions.

'The most unfortunate affair,' exclaimed her ladyship distractedly. 'Sure never was a woman so cursed. But indeed I was born under a frowning star, Mr. Kelly, and so my lord's friends cannot visit him, but some untoward accident puts them into peril.'

'You need be troubled by no fears on our account,' replied Kelly, 'for Nick will ensure the fellow's silence before ever he lets him out of his sight.'

'True,' said she, with a fresh pang of anxiety, 'Mr. Wogan is with him and will doubtless seek an explanation.'

Kelly smiled, but without any overwhelming amusement.

'Neither,' said he, 'need your ladyship fear that he will listen to any indiscreet explanation. Words have very little to do with the explanations which Nicholas favours.'

Lady Oxford remarked the distant stateliness in Kelly's tone and was in a hurry to retrieve the slip she had made.

'It is just that I mean,' she cried, coming over to Kelly. 'If Mr. Wogan--kills this man,' and her eyes flashed as though she did in her heart desire that consummation, 'here at the Park Gates--'

'Believe me,' replied Kelly reassuringly, 'he will omit no proper ceremony if he does.'

'No, nor will the county justices either,' retorted Lady Oxford, 'and there are Mr. George Kelly and Mr. Nicholas Wogan to explain their presence at Brampton Bryan Manor, as best they can, to a bench of bumpkins.'

'Again your ladyship is unnecessarily alarmed. For if Mr. Scrope is now no more, Mr. George Kelly and Mr. Nicholas Wogan are still Mr. James Johnson and his secretary Mr. Hilton. No harm threatens Brampton Bryan Manor from their visit.'

This he said no less coldly, and to cut the conversation short, stalked with excessive dignity to the door. Lady Oxford was gazing ruefully down the avenue from the window, when she heard the knob of the door move under his hand. She turned quickly about.

'It was not of Brampton Bryan Manor I was thinking,' she said hurriedly, 'nor of our safety. Why, in what poor esteem do you hold me! Am I then so contemptible a thing?' There was no anger in her reproach. Rather it melted in a most touching sadness. 'Have I no friends whose safety troubles me?' she added. At that out came her handkerchief and fluttered at her eyes. 'Nay, but I thought I had--two of the noblest.' It was a mere scrap of a handkerchief, and the greater part of that a lace edging. It would not have sopped up many tears, but it served her ladyship's turn. For indeed the mere sight of it convinced Kelly of his monstrous cruelty.

'Your ladyship!' he cried, turning back. 'Tears! And I have caused them. Faith, I should be hanged for that. Yet they flow for my friend and me, and I am blessed instead.'

But she would have none of his apologies. She stepped back as he approached.

'No,' said she, and wiped an imaginary tear-drop from the dryest of eyes; 'you have asked me for an explanation of Mr. Scrope's coming and you have a right to ask it.'

'Madam,' expostulated Kelly, 'I was careful, on the contrary, to ask for no explanation whatever. For I have no right to it.'

'Oh, but you have,' returned her ladyship with asperity; and then up went her handkerchief again.

'All men,' she said, in a voice most pathetical, 'have a right to ask any explanation of any woman, at anytime. Women, poor sad creatures, are suspect from their cradles, and to distrust them is the prerogative of manhood.' Here she tore away her handkerchief and lifted her hands in an ardent prayer. 'Oh that some day I might meet with one single man who would believe us worthy of respect!' She walked away to the window and said in a low voice, 'With what friendship would I requite him.'

Thus the unfortunate Mr. Kelly was not merely plunged in remorse, but brought to see that he had missed the one solitary path which would have led him into this great lady's friendship.

'Your ladyship,' he implored, 'mistakes my sentiments altogether.'

'Mr. Kelly,' she replied, proudly, 'we will not, if you please, pursue the matter. You have your explanation and I trust you will allow it to content you,' and so she sailed majestically out of the room, leaving Mr. Kelly in that perturbation that he quite failed to notice he had received no explanation whatever. She dropped her stateliness, however, when the door was closed behind her, and, hurrying across the hall, lay in wait behind a shrubbery for Wogan's return. Wogan, on the other hand, had admirable reasons for avoiding all paths, and so slipped into the back of the house unseen. Consequently it was not until half-an-hour later, when Lady Oxford was fairly distracted, that she discovered him, decently clothed, and urging upon Kelly the necessity of an immediate retreat. He broke off from his advice as Lady Oxford entered.

'You have done him no hurt? 'she asked, looking Wogan over from head to foot in search of a speck of blood, and ready to swoon if she saw one.

'Not the least in the world,' replied Wogan.

'Nor he you?'

'There was never any likelihood of that.' Wogan had to put the best face on the matter possible, and since he could not own to the humiliating truth, why, the necessary lie might just as well redound to his credit. 'I swore him to secrecy upon his bended knees. He took the oath on the hilt of this very sword, 'and Wogan hitched forward his hanger.

A footman at this moment announced that dinner was served.

'Will you give me your hand, Mr. Wogan?' asked Lady Oxford, and detaining him until Kelly had passed out of the room:

'He gave you doubtless a reason for his coming?' she asked.

'Surely he did,' said Wogen, who was not for admitting any omission on his own part.

'And what reason?' asked her ladyship.

Mr. Wogan looked at the ground and got a flash of inspiration.

'Why,' said he as bold as brass, 'precisely the same reason which you gave to my friend George Kelly,' in which answer Wogan hit the literal truth, although her ladyship looked puzzled, as well she might, and then flushed a fine crimson.

However, she made up an ingenious story, and that same day hinted rather than told it with a pretty suggestion of sympathy which quite melted Mr. Kelly's heart, and threw Wogan into some doubt whether to believe her or no. Scrope, it appeared, had been at some indefinite time a secretary to Mr. Walpole, and was entrusted with the keeping of the good man's accounts. Lady Oxford was then simply Mistress Margaret Middleton and intimate with her cousin, Mr. Walpole, although since her marriage, as Mr. Kelly and his friend were requested to note, that intimacy had entirely ceased. Hence it came about that the rash Scrope cast longing eyes upon the humble relation of his patron, and was indeed so carried away by passion that Margaret was forced now and again to chide him for the forwardness of his demeanour. Also, alas! he transgressed in a more serious way. For Mr. Walpole's accounts fell into the saddest disorder; there were sums of money of which no trace could be found until--well, the deplorable affair was hushed up. Mr. Scrope was turned off and set down his dismissal to Margaret, who, gentle soul, would not have hurt a fly. From that time he had not spared her his resentment, and would go miles out of his way if by any chance he might fix a slight upon her. Which conduct she most Christianly forgave, since indeed the poor man's head must needs be turned.

'Yet he had all the appearances of prosperity,' objected Wogan.

'I fancied that I said that there were large sums missing,' replied her ladyship.

'Yes, you did indeed say so,' said Mr. Kelly, 'but you avoided the implication out of your generous pity.'

It is not in truth very difficult to befool a man who does half the fooling himself. Mr. Kelly was altogether appeased by Lady Oxford's explanation, which to his friend seemed to explain nothing, but none the less he readily acknowledged to Wogan the propriety of hurrying his business to a close.

'To tell the truth,' said Wogan, as soon as her ladyship had withdrawn, 'I feel my cravat stiffening prophetically about my neck. My presence does not help you; indeed, it is another danger; and since we are but a few miles from Aberystwith, I am thinking that I could do nothing wiser than start for that port to-night.'

The Parson drew figures with his forefinger on the table for a while; then:

'I would not have you go, he said slowly. 'I will use what despatch I may; but I would not have you go, and leave me here.'

Kelly was true to his word, and used so much despatch that within two days he extorted a promise from Lord Oxford to undertake the muslin trade in England, as the cant phrase went. Possibly he might have won that same promise before had used the same despatch. But Lord Oxford's foible was to hold long discourses, and Mr. Pope truly said that he had an epical habit of beginning everything at the middle. However it may be, the two men left the Manor on the morning of the third day. Wogan drove back with the Parson as far as Worcester, who for the first few miles remained in a melancholy silence, and then burst out of a sudden.

'To think that she should be mewed up in a corner of Herefordshire, with no companions but drunken rustics! Mated to an old pantaloon, too!'

'Sure it was her ladyship's own doing,' murmured Wogan.

'No woman in all London could hold a candle to her. And we distrusted her--we distrusted her, Nick.' He beat a clenched fist into the palm of his other hand to emphasise the enormity of the crime. 'Why, what impertinent fools men are!'

Then he again relapsed into silence and again broke out.

'Damme! but Fortune plays bitter tricks upon the world. 'Tis all very well to strike at a pair of rascals like you and me, Nick, but she strikes at those who offend her least. Faith, but I am bewildered. Here is a woman indisputably born to be a queen and she is a nurse. And no better prospect when my lord dies than a poor jointure and a dull Dower House.'

'Oh, she told you that, did she?' said Wogan. 'Sure it was a queenly complaint.'

'She made no complaint,' said Kelly fiercely. 'She would not--she could not. It is a woman of unexampled patience.'

He grumbled into silence, and his thoughts changed and turned moodily about himself.

'Why did I ever preach that sermon?' he exclaimed. 'But for that I might now have the care of half-a-dozen rambling parishes. Instead of hurrying and scurrying from one end of Europe to the other, at the risk of my neck, I might sit of an evening by the peat fire of an inn kitchen and give the law to my neighbour. I might have a little country parsonage all trailed over with roses, and leisure to ensure preferment by my studies and enjoy the wisdom of my Latin friend Tully. I might have a wife, too,' he added, 'and maybe half a score of children to plague me out of my five wits with their rogueries.'

He fetched up a sigh as he ended which would have done credit to my Lady Oxford; and Wogan, seeing his friend in this unwonted pother, was minded to laugh him out of it.

'And a credit to your cloth you would have been,' says he. 'Why, it's a bottle you would have taken into the pulpit with you, and a mighty big tumbler to measure your discourse by. Indeed there would have been but one point of resemblance between yourself and your worthier brethren, and that's the number of times you turned your glass upside down before you came to an end.'

Kelly, however, was not to be diverted from his melancholy. The picture of the parsonage was too vivid on the canvas of his desires. And since he dreamed of one impossibility, no doubt he went a step further and dreamed of another besides. No doubt his picture of the parsonage showed the figure of the parson's wife, and no doubt the parson's wife was very like to my Lady Oxford.

Wogan, though he had laughed, was, to tell the truth, somewhat disturbed, and began to reckon up how much he was himself to blame for setting Kelly's thoughts towards her ladyship. He had not thought that his friend had taken the woman so much to heart. But whenever the Parson fell a dreaming of a quiet life and the cure of souls, it was a sure sign the world was going very ill with him.

'I would have you remember, George,' said Wogan, 'that not so long ago I saw you stand up before a certain company in Paris and cry out with an honest--ay, an honest passion, "May nothing come between the Cause and me!"

Kelly flushed as his words were recalled to him and turned his head away. Wogan held out his hand.

'George, am I then to understand that something has come between the Cause and you?' And he had to repeat the question before he got an answer. Then Kelly turned back.

'Understand nothing, Nick, but that I am a fool,' he cried heartily, and slapped his hand into Wogan's. 'True, the Cause, the Cause,' he muttered to himself once or twice. After all, Nick,' he said, 'we have got the old man's assurance. My Lord Oxford will lend a hand. We have not failed the Cause.' And they did not speak again until they drove into Worcester. Then Kelly turned to Nick with a sad sort of smile.

'Well, have you nothing to say to me? 'said he.

Mr. Wogan could discover nothing to say until he had stepped out of the chaise at the post-house and was shaking his friend's hand. Then he delivered himself of the soundest piece of philosophy imaginable.

'Woman,' he said, 'is very much like a jelly-fish--very pretty and pink and transparent to look at, but with a devil of a sting if you touch it.'

CHAPTER VII

[LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU HAS A WORD TO SAY ABOUT SMILINDA]

From Worcester Nicholas Wogan made his way to Bristol, and, taking passage there on a brigantine bound for Havre-de-Grace with a cargo of linen, got safely over into France. He travelled forthwith to Paris that he might put himself at the disposition of General Dillon, and, being commanded to supper some few days after his arrival by the Duke of Mar, saw a familiar swarthy face nodding cheerily at him across the table. The lady was embrowned with the Eastern sun, and, having lost her eye-lashes by that disease which she fought so manfully to conquer, her eyes were fierce and martial. It was indeed the face of the redoubtable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, sister to the Duchess of Mar, who chanced to be passing through Paris on her travels from Constantinople. Wogan remembered that Mr. Kelly's rustic friend at Brampton Bryan had spoken of Lady Mary with considerable spleen. And since he began to harbour doubts of her rusticity, he determined to seek some certain information from Lady Mary.

Lady Mary was for a wonder in a most amiable mood, and had more than one question to put concerning 'Kelly as the Bishop that was to be when your King came to his own.'

'Why, madam, he has a new friend,' said Wogan.

Lady Mary maybe caught a suspicion of uneasiness in Wogan's tone. She cocked her head whimsically.

'A woman?'

'Yes.'

'Who?'

'My Lady Oxford.'

Lady Mary made a round O of her lips, drew in a breath, and blew it out again.

'There go the lawn-sleeves.'

Wogan took a seat by her side.

'Why?'

Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders.

'In what esteem is she held?' continued Wogan, 'of what character is she?'

'I could never hear,' returned Lady Mary carelessly. 'For her friends always stopped abruptly when they chanced upon her character, and the rest was merely pursed lips and screwed-up eyes, which it would be the unfairest thing in the world to translate in her disfavour. Her character, Mr. Wogan, is a tender and delicate plant. It will not grow under glass, but in a dark room, where I believe it flourishes most invisibly.'

Lady Mary seemed ill-disposed to pursue the topic, and began to talk of her journey and the great things she had seen at Constantinople. Wogan waited until she came to a pause, and then stepped in with another question.

'Is Lady Oxford political?'

'Lady Oxford! Lady Oxford!' she repeated almost pettishly. 'Upon my word, the woman has infected you. You can speak of nothing else. Political?' and she laughed maliciously. 'That she is, and on both sides. She changes her party more often than an ambitious statesman. For politics to my Lady Oxford are just pawns in the great game of Love.'

'Oh, Love,' exclaimed Wogan, with a recollection of Mr. Scrope. 'Is Love her quarry?'

'She will play cat to any man's mouse,' returned Lady Mary indifferently.

'And there are many mice?'

Lady Mary shrugged her shoulders and made no reply. However, Wogan's appetite for information was only whetted, and to provoke Lady Mary to speak more freely he made an inventory of Lady Oxford's charms. He dwelt on her attractions. Lady Mary played with her fan, pulled savagely at the feathers, opened it, shut it up, while Wogan discoursed serenely on item--a dark eye, big, with a glint of light in it like sunshine through a thundercloud. Lady Mary laughed scornfully. Wogan went on to item--a profusion of blackish-brown hair, very silky, with a gloss, and here and there a gold thread in the brown; item--a Barbary shape; item--an admirable instep and a most engaging ankle.

'It would look very pretty in the stocks,' Lady Mary snapped out.

Wogan shook his head with a knowing air.

''Twould slip out.'

'Not if I had the locking of it in,' she exclaimed with a vicious stamp of the foot, and rose, as though to cross the room.

'I have omitted the lady's most adorable merit,' said Wogan thoughtfully. Lady Mary was altogether human, and did not cross the room.

'She has the greatest affection for your ladyship. She spoke of your ladyship indeed in quite unmeasured terms, and while praising your ladyship's wit would not have it that one single spark was due to the cleverness of your ladyship's friends. Upon that point she was most strenuous.'

Lady Mary sat down again. The stroke had evidently told.

'I am most grateful to her,' she said, 'and when did Lady Oxford show such a sweet condescension towards me?'

'But a few weeks ago at Brampton Bryan, where she was nursing her husband with an assiduous devotion.'

'I have known her show the like devotion before, when her losses at cards have driven her from London.'

'So she gambles?' inquired Wogan. 'Altogether, then, a dangerous friend for George.'

Lady Mary nodded.

'Particularly for George,' said she with a smile. 'For observe, she is compact of wiles, and so is most dangerous to an honest man. She is at once insatiable in her desires, and implacable if they are not fulfilled. She is always in love, and knows nothing of what the word means. She is tender at times, but only through caprice; she is never faithful except for profit or lack of occasion to be anything else. Coquetry is the abiding principle of her nature, and her virtue merely a habit of hiding her coquetry. Her mind is larded with affectations as is her face with paint, and once or twice she has been known to weep--when tears were likely to deceive a man. There, Mr. Wogan, you have her likeness, and I trust you are satisfied.'

It was not a character very much to Wogan's liking (Lady Mary, he learned later, was quoting from a manuscript 'portrait' of her own designing), though he drew a spice of comfort from the thought that Lady Mary might have coloured the effigy with her unmistakable enmity. But events proved that she had not over-coloured it, and even at that time Lady Oxford had no better reputation than Lady Mary Wortley attributed to her. The ballad-makers called her gallant, and they did her no wrong--the ballad-makers of the ruelles, be it understood, not they of the streets, but such poets as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu herself and his Grace Sophia of Wharton.[^[1]] The street-singers knew not Lady Oxford, who, indeed, was on the top of the fashion, and could hold her own in the war of written verses. It was in truth to her ability to give as good as she took in the matter of ballads that she owed Lady Mary's hostility, who had no taste for the counter-stroke. There were many such daring Penthesileas of the pen who never gave each other quarter; but neither Wogan nor the Parson were at this time in their secrets, although subsequently a ballad, not from Lady Mary's pen, was to have an astonishing effect upon their fortunes.

'Your ladyship can help me to make the best of it, at all events,' said Wogan. 'Since you have told me so much, will you tell me this one thing more? Have you ever heard of Mr. Scrope?'

'Scrope? Scrope?' said she casting about in her recollections. Wogan told her the story of Mr. Scrope's appearance at Brampton Bryan, and the explanation which Lady Oxford had given to account for it. Lady Mary laughed heartily.

'Secretary to Mr. Walpole?' she said. 'And how, then, did he come to hear that mad sermon of Mr. Kelly's at Dublin?'

'Sure I have been puzzled to account for that myself,' says Wogan. 'But who is he? Where does he come from? What brought him to Brampton Bryan? What took him away in such a mighty hurry? For upon my word I find it difficult to believe the man's a coward.'

'And you are in the right,' replied her ladyship. 'I know something of Mr. Scrope, and I will wager it was no cowardice made him run. I doubt you have not seen the last of Mr. Scrope. It is a passionate, determined sort of creature. He came to London a year or so agone. It was understood that he was a country gentleman with a comfortable estate in Leicestershire. He had laid his estate at Lady Oxford's feet, before she was as yet her ladyship. Lady Oxford would have it, and then would have none of it, and married the Earl. Well, he had been her valet for a season, and, I have no doubt, thought the service worth any price. She gave him her fan to hold, her gloves to caress, and what more can a man want? He spent much of his money, and some whisper that he turned informer afterwards.'

'Oh, did he?' asked Wogan, who was now yet more concerned that he had let the informer slip through his fingers.

'Yes. An informer for conscience' sake--a gentleman spy. His father died for Monmouth's affair. He has ever hated the Pretender and his cause. He is a Protestant and a fanatic.'

Then she looked at Wogan and began to laugh.

'I would have given much to have seen you bouncing down the road after Mr. Scrope's chaise,' and she added seriously, 'But I doubt you have not heard the last of Mr. Scrope.'

That also was Wogan's thought. For Lady Mary's story, though vague enough, was sufficiently clear to deepen his disquietude. Well, Mr. Wogan would get no comfort by the mere addling his brains with thinking of the matter, and he thrust it forth of his mind and went upon his way, that led him clean out of the path of this story for a while. He was despatched to Cadiz to take charge of a ship, and, in company with Captain Galloway of the Resolution, who was afterwards seized at Genoa, and Morgan, of the Lady Mary, he spent much fruitless time in cruising on and off the coasts of France, Spain, and Sweden. It was given out that they carried snuff, or were engaged in the Madagascar trade. But they took no cargoes aboard but barrels of powder and stands of arms, and waited on the Rising, which never came. There were weeks idled away at Morlaix, at Roscoff in Brittany, at Lisbon in Portugal, at Alicant Bay in Spain, until Wogan's heart grew sick with impatience. At rare times, when the venture wore a face of promise, the little fleet would run the hazard of the Channel and creep along the English coast, from Dartmouth, across the West Bay to Portland, from Portland on to the Isle of Wight. Mr. Wogan would pace the deck of his little ketch, Fortune, of a night, and as he looked at the quiet fields lying dark beneath the sky, would wonder how the world wagged for his friend the Parson, and whether my Lady Oxford was shaping it or no, until a longing would seize on him to drop a boat into the water and himself into the boat, and row ashore and see. But it was not for more than a full twelve months that his longing was fulfilled, and during those twelve months the harm was done.

CHAPTER VIII

[MR. KELLY HAS AN ADVENTURE AT A MASQUERADE BALL]

For the greater part of that year Mr. Kelly simply went about his business. He travelled backwards and forwards from General Dillon, Lord Lansdowne, the Duke of Mar, in Paris, to the Bishop of Rochester, in London, and from the Bishop to the others of the five who mismanaged the Chevalier's affairs in England, Lord Arran, Lord Strafford, Lord North and Grey, Lord Orrery, and last, though not least, the Earl of Oxford. Thus business brought him more than once knocking again at the doors of Brampton Bryan Manor, though he did not always find her ladyship at home to welcome him. On such occasions he found the great house very desolate for the want of her footstep and her voice, and so would pull out his watch and fall to wondering what at that precise moment she was engaged upon in town.

Thus things dallied, then, until a warm wet night of summer in the year 1720. Mr. Kelly was in London and betook himself to His Majesty's Theatre in Drury Lane, where he witnessed a farce which was very much to his taste. It was entitled 'South-Sea; or the Biter Bit,' and was happy not merely in its quips, but in the moment of its performance. For the King, or, as the honest party called him, the Elector, and his lords had sold out, and were off to Germany with their plunder, and the stocks were falling by hundreds every week. Mr. Kelly might well laugh at the sallies on the stage and the wry faces with which the pit and boxes received them. For he had recently sold out his actions in the Mississippi scheme at a profit of 1,200 per cent., and had his money safe locked up at Mr. Child's, the goldsmith. Kelly's, however, was not a mere wanton pleasure. For the floating of the bubble out of reach meant a very solid change in the Jacobite prospects. So long as the South-Sea scheme prospered and all the town grew wealthy, there would be no talk of changing kings and no chance for Mr. Kelly's friends. That great and patriotic bishop whom he served, my Lord of Rochester, had said to him this many a month past, 'Let 'em forget their politics, let 'em all run mad in Change Alley, and the madder the better. For the funds will fall and be the ruin of thousands, and when England is sunk into a salutary wretchedness and discontent, then our opportunity will come.'

It was altogether, then, in a very good humour that Mr. Kelly left the theatre. The night was young, and he disinclined for his lodgings. He strolled across to the Groom Porters, in White Hall, where his spirits were mightily increased. For taking a hand there at Bassette, in three deals he won nine rich septlevas, and, for once, did not need the money, and when he left the Groom Porters his pockets were heavy with gold, and his head swimming with the fumes of punch.

It is not to be wondered at that those same fumes of punch floated Lady Oxford into Mr. Kelly's mind. He swaggered up St. James's Street with her ladyship consequently riding atop of his bemused fancies. It was a gay hour in St. James's, being then about half past one of the morning. Music rippled out of windows open on the night. Kelly heard the dice rattle within and the gold clink on the green cloth; lovers were whispering on the balconies; the world seemed to be going very well for those who had not their money in the Bubble, and for no one better than for Mr. Kelly. He looked about him, if by chance he might catch a glimpse of his divinity among the ladies of fashion as he watched them getting into their chairs, pushing their hoops sidelong before them, and the flambeaux flaring on their perfections. He imagined himself a Paladin rescuing her from innumerable foes. She was an angel, a sprite, a Hamadryad, in fact everything tender and immaterial.

He was roused from these dreams by an illumination of more than ordinary brilliancy, and looking up saw that he had wandered to the theatre in the Haymarket. A ragged crowd of pickpockets and the like was gathered about the portico. Carriages and chairs set down in quick succession, ladies in dominoes, gentlemen in masks. Mr. Kelly remembered that it was a night of the masquerades; all the world would be gathered in the theatre, and why not Lady Oxford, who was herself the better half of it? Kelly had a ticket in his pocket, pushed through the loiterers, and stood on the inner rim of the crowd watching the masqueraders arrive. Every carriage that drew up surely concealed her ladyship, every domino that passed up the steps hid her incomparable figure. Mr. Kelly had staked his soul with unruffled confidence upon her identity with each of the first twelve women who thus descended before he realised that he was not the only one who waited. From the spot where he stood he could see into the lobby of the theatre. Heidegger, M. le surintendant des plaisirs du Roi de l'Angleterre,

'With a hundred deep wrinkles impressed on his front,
Like a map with a great many rivers upon 't,'

was receiving the more important of his guests. The guests filed past him into the parterre, Heidegger remained. But another man loitered ever in the lobby too. He was evidently expecting someone, and that with impatience. For as each coach or chaise drew up he peered eagerly forward; as it delivered its occupants he turned discontentedly away. It is perhaps doubtful whether Mr. Kelly would have paid him any great attention but for his dress, which arrested all eyes and caused the more tender of the ladies who passed him to draw their cloaks closer about them with a gesture of disgust. For he was attired to represent a headsman, being from head to foot in black, with a crape mask upon his face and a headsman's axe in his hand. He had carried his intention out with such thoroughness, moreover, that he had daubed his doublet and hose with red.

Mr. Kelly was in a mood to be charmed by everything strange and eccentric, and the presence of this bloodsmeared executioner at a masquerade seemed to him a piece of the most delicate drollery. Moreover, the executioner was waiting like Mr. Kelly, and with a like anxiety. Mr. Kelly had a fellow-feeling for him in his impatience which prompted him suddenly to run up the steps and accost him.

'Like me, you are doubtless waiting for your aunt,' said the Parson courteously.

The impulse, the movement, the words had all been the matter of a second; but the executioner was more than naturally startled, as Mr. Kelly might have perceived had he possessed his five wits. For the man leaped rather than stepped back; he gave a gasp; his hand gripped tight about the handle of his axe. Then he stepped close to Kelly.

'You know me?' he said. The voice was muffled, the accent one of menace. Kelly noticed neither the voice nor the menace. He bowed with ceremony.

'Without a doubt. You are M. de Strasbourg.'

The headsman laughed abruptly like a man relieved.

'You and I,' he returned, mimicking Kelly's politeness of manner, 'will be better acquainted in the future.'

Kelly was overjoyed with the rejoinder. 'Here's a devil of a fellow for you,' he cried, and with his elbow nudged Heidegger in the ribs. Heidegger was at that moment bent to the ground before the Duchess of Wharton, and nearly stumbled over her Grace's train. He turned in a passion as soon as the Duchess had passed.

'Vas you do dat for dam?' he said all in a breath. Kelly however was engaged in contemplating the executioner. He ran his thumb along the edge of the axe.

'It is cruelly blunt,' said he.

'You need not fear,' returned the other. 'For your worship is only entitled to a cord.'

'Oh, so you know me,' says Kelly, stepping close to the executioner.

'Without a doubt,' replied the latter, stepping back, 'Monsieur le Marchand de dentelles.'

It was Kelly's turn to be startled, and that he was effectually; he was shocked into a complete recovery of his senses and an accurate estimation of his folly. He walked to the entrance and stood upon the steps. The executioner knew him, knew something of his trade. Who, then, was M. de Strasbourg? Kelly recalled the tones of his voice, conned them over in his mind, and was not a penny the wiser. He glanced backwards furtively across his shoulder and looked the man over from head to foot.

At that moment a carriage drove up to the entrance. Mr. Kelly was standing on the top of the steps and the face of the coachman on the box was just on a level with his own. He stared, in a word, right at it, and so took unconsciously an impression of it upon his mind, while pondering how he should act with regard to M. de Strasbourg. Consequently he did not notice that a woman stepped out of the carriage and, without looking to the right or left, quickly mounted the steps. His eyes, in fact, were still fixed upon the coachman's face; and it needed the brushing of her cloak against his legs to rouse him from his reflections.

He turned about just as she disappeared at the far end of the lobby. He caught a glimpse of a white velvet cloak and an inch of blue satin petticoat under a muffling domino. He also saw that M. de Strasbourg was drawn close behind a pillar, as though he wished to avoid the lady. As soon, however, as she had vanished he came boldly out of his concealment and followed her into the theatre. Mr. Kelly began instantly to wonder whether a closer view of the domino would help him discover who M. de Strasbourg really was, and entering the theatre he went up into the boxes.

At first his eyes were bedazzled by the glitter of lights and jewels and the motley throng which paraded the floor. There was the usual medley of Chinese, Turks, and friars; here was a gentleman above six feet high dressed like a child in a white frock and leading strings and attended by another of very low stature, who fed him from time to time with a papspoon; there was a soldier prancing a minuet upon a hobby horse to the infinite discomfort of his neighbours; and as for the women--it seemed to Mr. Kelly that all the goddesses of the heathen mythology had come down from Olympia in their customary négligé.

Among them moved M. de Strasbourg like a black shadow, very distinguishable. Kelly kept his eyes in the man's neighbourhood, and in a little perceived a masked lady with her hair dressed in the Greek fashion. What character she was intended to represent he could not for the life of him determine. He learnt subsequently that she went as Iphigeneia--Iphigeneia, if you please, in a blue satin petticoat. To be sure her bosom was bared for the sacrifice, but then all the ladies in that assembly were in the like case. She had joined a party of friends, of whom M. de Strasbourg was not one. For though he kept her ever within his sight, following her hither and thither, it was always at a distance; and, so far as Kelly could see, and he did not take his eyes from the pair, he never spoke to her so much as a single word. On the contrary he seemed rather to lurk behind and avoid her notice. Kelly's curiosity was the more provoked by this stealthy pursuit. He lost his sense of uneasiness in a wonder what the man designed against the woman. He determined to wait the upshot of the affair.

The night wore away, the masqueraders thinned. The inch of blue satin petticoat took her departure from the parterre. M. de Strasbourg followed her; Mr. Kelly followed M. de Strasbourg.

The lobby was crowded. Kelly threaded his way through the crowd and came out upon the steps. He saw the lady, close wrapped again in her velvet cloak, descend to her carriage. The coachman gathered up his reins and took his whip from its rest. The movement chanced to attract Kelly's eyes. He looked at the coachman, at the first glance indifferently, at the second with all his attention. For this was not the same man who had driven the carriage to the masquerade. And then the coachman turned his full face towards Kelly and nodded. He nodded straight towards him. But was the nod meant for him? No! Well, then, for someone just behind his shoulder.

Kelly did not turn, but stepped quietly aside and saw M. de Strasbourg slip past him down the steps. So the nod was meant for him. M. de Strasbourg was still masked, but he had thrown a cloak about his shoulders which in some measure disguised his dress. The mystery seemed clear to Kelly; the lady was to be forcibly abducted unless someone, say Mr. James Johnson, had a word to say upon the matter. The carriage turned and drove slowly through the press of chairs and shouting link-boys; M. de Strasbourg on the side-walk kept pace with the carriage. Kelly immediately crossed the road, and, concealed by the carriage, kept pace with M. de Strasbourg. Thus they went as far as the corner of the Haymarket, and then turned into Pall Mall.

At this point Kelly, to be the more ready should the lady need his assistance, stepped off the pavement and walked in the mud hard by the hind wheels of the carriage. It was now close upon four of the morning, but, fortunately, very dark, and only a sullen sort of twilight about the south-eastern fringes of the sky.

In Pall Mall the carriages were fewer, but the coachman did not quicken his pace, doubtless out of regard for M. de Strasbourg, and at the corner of Pall Mall, where the road was quite empty, he jerked the horses to a standstill. Instantly M. de Strasbourg ran across the road to the carriage, the coachman bent over on that side to watch, and Mr. Kelly, on the other side, ran forward to the box. M. de Strasbourg wrenched open the door and jumped into the carriage. Mr. Kelly heard a woman's scream and sprang on to the box. The coachman turned with a start. Before he could shout, before he could speak, Kelly showed him a pistol (for he went armed) under the man's nose.

'One word,' said Kelly, 'and I will break your ugly face in with the stock of that, my friend.'

The woman screamed again; M. de Strasbourg thrust his head out of the window.

'Go on,' he shouted with an oath, 'you know where. At a gallop! Kill the horses, they are not mine! Flog 'em to death so you go but fast enough.'

'To the right,' said Kelly, quietly.

The man whipped up the horses. They started at a gallop up St. James's Street.

'To the right,' again whispered Kelly.

The carriage turned into Ryder Street, rocking on its wheels. M. de Strasbourg's head was again thrust from the window.

'That's not the way. Are you drunk, man?--are you drunk?' he cried.

'To the left,' says Kelly, imperturbably, and fingered the lock of the pistol a little.

The carriage swung into Bury Street.

'Stop,' said Kelly.

The coachman reined in his horses; the carriage stopped with a jerk.

'Where in the devil's name have you taken us?' cried M. de Strasbourg, opening the door.

Kelly sprang to the ground, ran round the carriage to the open door.

'To the Marchand de dentelles, M. de Strasbourg,' said he with a bow. 'I have some most elegant pieces of point d'Alençon for the lady's inspection.'

M. de Strasbourg was utterly dumbfounded. He staggered back against the panels of the carriage; his mouth opened and shut; it seemed there was no language sufficiently chaotic to express his discomposure. At last:

'You are a damned impudent fellow,' he gasped out in a weak sort of quaver.

'Am I?' asked Kelly. 'Shall we ask the lady?'

He peeped through the door. The lady was huddled up in a corner--an odd heap of laces, silks, and furbelows, but with never a voice in all the confusion. It seemed she had fainted.

Meanwhile M. de Strasbourg turned on the unfortunate coachman.

'Get down, you rascal,' he cried; 'you have been bribed, you're in the fellow's pay. Get down! Not a farthing will you get from me, but only a thrashing that will make your bones ache this month to come.'

'Your honour,' replied the coachman piteously, 'it was not my fault. He offered to kill me unless I drove you here.'

M. de Strasbourg in a rage flung back to Kelly. He clapped a hand on his shoulder and plucked him from the carriage door.

'So you offered to kill him, did you?' he said. 'Perhaps you will make a like offer to me. But I'll not wait for the offer.'

He unclasped his cloak, drew his sword (happily not his axe) and delivered his thrust with that rapidity it seemed all one motion. Mr. Kelly jumped on one side, and the sword just gleamed against his sleeve. M. de Strasbourg overbalanced himself and stumbled a foot or two forwards. Kelly had whipped out his sword by the time that M. de Strasbourg had recovered, and a battle began which was whimsical enough. A quiet narrow street, misty with the grey morning, the carriage lamps throwing here a doubtful shadow, a masked headsman leaping, swearing, thrusting in an extreme passion, and, to crown the business, the coachman lamenting on the box that whichever honourable gentleman was killed he would most surely go wanting his hire, he that had a woeful starving family! Mr. Kelly, indeed, felt the strongest inclination to laugh, but dared not, so hotly was he pressed. The attack, however, he did not return, but contented himself with parrying the thrusts. His design, indeed, reached at no more than the mere disarming of M. de Strasbourg. M. de Strasbourg, however, lost even his last remnants of patience.

'Rascal!' he cried. 'Scullion! Grasshopper!'

Then he threw his hat at Kelly and missed, and at last flung his periwig full in Kelly's face, accompanying the present with a thrust home which his opponent barely parried.

It was this particular action which brought the contest to a grotesque conclusion quite in keeping with its beginnings. For the periwig tumbled in the mud, and the coachman, assured that he would get no stiver of his hire, scrambled down from his box, rushed at a prize of so many pounds in value, picked it up and took to his heels.

M. de Strasbourg uttered a cry and leaped backwards out of reach.

'Stop!' he bawled to the coachman. The coachman only ran the quicker. M. de Strasbourg passed his hand over his shaven crown and looked at the carriage. It was quite impossible to abduct a lady without a periwig to his head. He swore, he stamped, he shouted 'Stop!' once more, and then dashed at full speed past Kelly in pursuit.

Kelly made no effort to prevent him, but gave way to his inclination and laughed. The coachman threw a startled glance over his shoulder and, seeing that M. de Strasbourg pressed after him, quickened his pace; behind him rushed a baldheaded executioner hurling imprecations. The pair fled, one after the other, to the top of Bury Street, turned the corner and disappeared. Kelly laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and leaned against the carriage.

The touch of the panels recalled him to the lady's presence. The street was now fairly roused by the clamour. Night-capped heads peeped from the windows; an indignant burgher in a dressing-gown even threatened Mr. Kelly with a blunderbuss; and, as he turned to the door of the carriage, he saw Mrs. Barnes at a window on the second floor looking at him with an air of the gravest discontent.

'Take me into shelter, good sir, at once, at once,' cried the lady from out the confusion of her laces, in a feigned tone of the masquerade.

'With all my heart, madam,' said Kelly. 'This is my door, and my lodging is at your disposal. Only the street is fairly awake, and should you prefer, I will most readily drive you to your own house.'

The lady looked out of the window. She was still masked so that Kelly could see nothing of her face, and she hesitated for a little, as if in doubt what answer she should make.

'You may make yourself at ease, madam,' said Kelly, believing that she was not yet relieved of fear; 'you are in perfect safety. Our worthy friend had to choose between your ladyship and his periwig, of which he has gone in chase. And, indeed, while I deplore his taste, I cannot but commend his discretion.'

'Very well,' she replied faintly. 'I owe you great thanks already, Mr.--' she paused.

'Johnson,' said Kelly.

'Mr. Johnson,' she replied; 'and I shall owe you yet more if you will drive me to my home.'

She gave him the address of a house in Queen's Square, Westminster. Kelly mounted on the box, took up the reins, and drove off. He looked up, as he turned the carriage in the narrow street, towards the second floor of his lodging. Mrs. Barnes shook her head at him in a terrible concern.

'I shall write and tell Mr. Wogan,' she bawled out.

'Hush, Mrs. Barnes, have you no sense?' cried Kelly, and he thought that from within the carriage he heard a stifled peal of laughter. 'Poor woman,' thought he, ''tis the hysterics,' and he drove to Queen's Square, Westminster, at a gallop.

CHAPTER IX

[WHEREIN THE CHIVALROUS MR. KELLY BEHAVES WITH DEPLORABLE FOLLY]

Mr. Kelly did not drive very straight perhaps, but to be sure he had the streets entirely to himself, and he certainly hit upon Queen's Square. The house was unknown to him, and he drove through the square before he found it.

It made an angle at the south corner, and was conspicuous for a solid family air, and a fine new statue of Queen Anne. Level windows of a distinguished respectability looked you over with indifference and said, 'Here's a house you'll take off your hat to, if you please.' 'Faith, but those windows must have shuddered in their sashes when they saw the Parson driving Madam home at five o'clock of the morning from a masquerade ball. A sleepy footman opened the door; a no less sleepy maid yawned in the hall. However, they both waked up to some purpose when Mr. Kelly jumped down from the box, bade the footman take the carriage round to the stables, called the maid to attend upon Madam, and himself opened the carriage door. He opened it quickly with a thought that Madam might very likely have removed her mask, for he was not so tipsy but that he was curious to know who it was that he had befriended. Madam, however, had done nothing of the kind.

'Is my lady ill?' asked the maid, hurrying forward. So Madam was a woman of title.

'A trifle discomposed, no doubt,' answered Kelly.

My lady said nothing whatever. It seemed she was unwilling to speak in the feigned voice before her maid, and in the natural voice before Mr. Kelly. She took his arm, and, leaning on it somewhat heavily, yet walked with a firm enough step into the hall, as Mr. Kelly could not but remark.

The maid threw open a door on the right. It gave into a little cheery room with a wainscot of polished oak, and a fire blazing on the hearth. My lady did not release Mr. Kelly's arm, and they both stood in front of the fire, and no doubt found the warmth comfortable enough after the chill of the morning. Her ladyship, indeed, went so far as to untie the strings of her domino, and make as though she would turn it back upon her shoulders. But with a glance at Mr. Kelly, she changed her mind, and hugged it somewhat closer over her dress than before.

'Were you at the masquerade, Mr. Johnson?' she asked in a low voice.

Mr. Kelly took the movement and the words together, and set them down as mere coquetry. Now, coquetry to Kelly at that time was a challenge, and it was contrary to his principles of honour to remain under such a provocation from man or woman. So he answered:

'Indeed, your ladyship, I was, to my eternal happiness. I shall dream of blue satin for a month to come.'

Her ladyship hitched her domino a little tighter still about her neck, and quickly tied the strings again, but made no other reply to his sally. The action, while it inflamed his curiosity, put him into something of a quandary. Was it but another piece of coquetry, he asked himself, or did she indeed wish to hinder him from discovering who she was? He could answer neither question, but he felt constrained, at all events, to offer to take her concealment as a hint that he should depart. It seemed a pity, for the adventure promised well.

'Your ladyship,' he said, and at that she gave a start and glanced at him, 'for so I understand from your maid I may address you,' he added, 'it grows late, the world is getting on to its legs, and your ladyship has had an eventful night.'

He took a step backwards and bowed.

'No,' said she, in a sharp quick voice, and put out a hand to detain him. Then she stopped as quickly, and drew in her hand again.

Mr. Kelly had borne himself very prettily in the little affair with M. de Strasbourg. Madam, in fact, was in the typical attitude of woman. She knew it was inconvenient to keep him, but for the life of her she could not let him go, wherefore she found a woman's way out of the trouble. For she staggered on her legs, and fainted to all appearance clean away, leaving matters to take their own course and shift for themselves. She fainted, of course, towards Mr. Kelly, who caught her in his arms and set her in an arm-chair. The maid, who all this while had been standing in the doorway, smiled. 'I will run to her ladyship's dressing-room for the salts,' she said, and so went out of the room, carefully closing the door behind her. Kelly kneeled by the lady's side, and taking up her fan, sought to waft her that way back into the world. She did not stir so much as a muscle, but lay all huddled up in her domino and mask. Mr. Kelly leaned over her, and so became aware of a penetrating perfume which breathed out from her dress. The perfume was bergamot.

Kelly dropped the fan and sat back on his heel. The maid had called her 'my lady,' and bergamot was Lady Oxford's favourite perfume. What if it was Lady Oxford he had unwittingly rescued! The possibility caught his breath away. If that were only true, he thought, why, he had done her some slight service, and straightway a great rush of tenderness came upon him, which went some way to sober him. In a minute, however, he dropped into despondency; for Lord Oxford's house was in the northern part of the town, as he knew, though he had never as yet been there, and neither the footman nor the maid were of her ladyship's household. Yet, if by some miracle the lady might be Smilinda! She was of the right height. Mr. Kelly looked at her, seeking vainly to trace out the form hidden under the folds of the domino. But if it were Smilinda, then Smilinda had swooned.

Mr. Kelly woke to this conclusion with a start of alarm. He clapped his hand into his pocket, pulled out his snuff-box, opened it quickly, and held it close beneath her ladyship's nose. The effect of the snuff was purely magical, for before she could have inhaled one grain of it--before, indeed, Mr. Kelly's box was within a foot of her face, up went her hands to the tie-strings of her mask.

So the swoon was counterfeit.

'Madam,' said Kelly, 'you interpret my desires to a nicety. It is your face I would see, but I did not dream of removing your mask. I did but offer to revive you with a pinch of snuff.'

She took the box from his hand, but not to inhale the macawba.

'It is for your own sake, Mr. Johnson, that I do not unmask. 'Tis like that I am a fright, and did you see my face you would take me for a pale ghost.'

'Madam,' said Kelly, 'I am not afraid of ghosts, nor apt to take your ladyship for one of those same airy appearances. A ghost! No,' he cried, surveying her. 'An angel! It is only the angels in Heaven that wear blue satin petticoats.'

The lady laughed, and checked the laugh, aware that a laugh betrays where a voice does not.

'Ghost or angel,' she said,' a being of my sex would fain see herself before she is seen. 'Tis a mirror I seek.' She was still holding Mr. Kelly's snuff-box. It was open and within the lid a little looking-glass was set; and as she spoke she turned away and bent over it with a motion as if she was about to lift her mask.

'Nay,' said Kelly abruptly; he stretched out his hand towards the snuff-box. 'The glass will be unfaithful, for the snuff has tarnished it. Madam, I beseech you, unloose that mask and turn your face to me and consult a truer mirror, your servant's eyes.' He spoke, perhaps, with a trifle more of agitation than the occasion seemed to warrant. Madam did indeed turn her face to Mr. Kelly, but it was in surprise at his agitation, and the mask still hid her face. Mr. Kelly could see no more than a pair of eyes blazing bright and black through the eyelet holes.

'You are gallant, I find, as well as brave,' she said, 'unless some other cause prompted the words.'

'What cause, madam? You wrong me.'

'Why,' said she, 'you still hold out your hand.' Mr. Kelly drew it away quickly. 'Ah,' she continued, 'I am right. There was a reason. You would not have me examine your snuff-box too closely.'

In that she was right, for the snuff-box was at once the dearest and the most dangerous of Mr. Kelly's possessions. It was a pretty toy in gold and tortoiseshell, with brilliants on the hinges, and had been given to Mr. Kelly on a certain occasion when he had been presented to his king at Avignon. For that reason, and for another, he was mightily loth to let it out of his possession. What that other reason was Madam very soon discovered.

'It is a dangerous toy,' she said. 'It has perhaps a secret to tell?'

'Madam, has not your mask?' returned Kelly.

'There is a mystery behind the mirror.'

'Well, then, it's mystery for mystery.'

For all that he spoke lightly he was in some uneasiness. For the lady might not be Smilinda, and her fingers played deftly about the setting of the mirror, touching a stone here and there. To be sure she wore gloves, and was the less likely therefore to touch the spring. But give her time enough--however, at that moment Kelly heard the maid's footsteps in the hall. He stepped to the door at once and opened it.

'You have the salts?' he asked. 'You have been the deuce of a time finding them.'

The maid stared at him.

'But her ladyship fainted,' she argued.

'Well,' said he, 'wasn't that why you went for the salts?'

'To be sure,' says she. ''Twas an order to go for the salts.'

She pushed open the door. My lady was still fingering the box. The maid paid no attention to the box, but she looked at my lady's mask; from the mask she looked towards Kelly with a shrug of the shoulders, which said 'Zany' as plain as writing.

Kelly had no thoughts to spare for the maid.

'Madam,' he said, 'here is your maid, to whose attentions I may leave you.'

He advanced, made a bow, took up his hat, held out his hand for his snuff-box.

'But I cannot let you go,' she answered, 'without I thank you'--all the time she was running her fingers here and there for the spring. Kelly noticed, too, with some anxiety, that while he had gone to the door she had made use of the occasion to strip off her glove--'and thank you fitly, as I should have done ere this. But the trouble I was in has made me backward.'

'Nay, madam,' said Kelly impatiently, and taking a step nearer, 'there is no need for thanks. No man could have done less.'

Her ladyship's fingers travelled faster in their vain attempt.

'But you risked your life!' said she in admiration.

'It is worth very little,' said he with a touch of disdain; 'and, madam, I keep you from your bed.'

The maid turned her eyes up to the ceiling, and then Madam by chance pressed on a diamond which loosed a hidden spring; the glass in the snuff-box flew down and showed a painting of the Chevalier in miniature.

'Oh!' cried my lady with a start in which, perhaps, there was a trace of affectation. Then she turned to the maid and bade her bring some wine and glasses. She spoke quickly, now forgetting for the moment to disguise her voice. Mr. Kelly recognized it with absolute certainty. The voice was Smilinda's.

The maid went out of the door. Kelly looked at the lady, and seeing that she was seemingly engrossed in the contemplation of the little picture, stole after the maid.

'Betty!' he called in a whisper.

'Sir? 'she asked, coming to a stop.

He took a crown from his pocket, spun it in the air, and caught it.

'The Margout,' said he, 'will doubtless be more difficult to discover than the salts,' he suggested.

'It might indeed be necessary to go down to the cellar,' she replied readily.

'And that would take time,' said Kelly, handing her the crown.

'It would take an entire crown's worth,' said the maid, pocketing the coin.

Kelly slipped back into the room.

The lady seemed not to have noticed Mr. Kelly's absence, so fondly did she study the portrait; but none the less, no sooner had he closed the door than she cried out, not by any means to him but in a sort of ecstasy, 'Le Roi!' Then she hid the snuff-box suddenly and glanced with a shudder round the room. The panic was altogether misplaced, since there could be no other person in the room except the owner of the box, who, if her ladyship was guilty for admiring, was ten thousand times more so for possessing it.

She caught with her hand at her heart when she perceived Mr. Kelly, then her eyes smiled from out of her mask, as though in the extremity of her alarm she had forgotten who he was, and so fell back in her chair with an air of languor, breathing deep and quick.

'Upon my word, I fear, Mr. Johnson,' she said, 'that if I have escaped one danger by your help I have fallen into another. You seem to me to be a man of dangerous company.'

'Indeed I find it so when I am with you, madam, since you discover my secrets and show me nothing of your own,' replied Kelly.

The maid it appears, had no less perversity than her mistress, for precisely at this moment she rapped on the door, and without waiting for any answer sharply entered the room, bearing the wine and glasses on a salver. There was a distance of three yards between Kelly and her ladyship. The maid measured the distance with her eyes, and her face showed some disappointment. Her ladyship dismissed her, filled both the glasses and took one in her hand. Mr. Kelly drained the other, and the bumper carried off the remnant of his brains.

'You run no danger from my knowing your secret, Mr. Johnson,' said she, 'for--'

Breaking off her sentence, she turned her head aside, swiftly pushed up her mask and kissed the portrait in the box, stooping her fragrant hair over it. Mr. Kelly, speeded by the wine, was this time too quick for her ladyship. Before she could raise her face he had paid the same compliment to her lips as she to his Majesty. She lifted her head with a bewitching air of anger.

'Lady Oxford!' he cried out as if in amazement, since he had bottomed the mystery for now some time. 'Forgive me, madam, if my hasty loyalty to my Sovereign prevented me from recognising his latest adherent. The Cause must now infallibly triumph.'

'Sir,' she began, looking up at him with her eyes melting from anger to reproach, 'your apology is something graceless. For though my colour be gone'--it was only the worse or artificial part of her matchless complexion which the mask had rubbed off--'you yet had time to know and respect a face you--'and then she came suddenly to a stop, as she untied the strings of her domino and threw it back from her shoulders. 'You blame me,' she said pitifully. Her ladyship was a ready woman, and even went more than half-way to meet an attack. At Brampton Bryan the talk had been of duty and the charms of a rustic life; but here the dutiful country wife, violently disarrayed in the extreme of fashion, had been alone to a masquerade ball and Mr. Kelly might conceive himself tricked. And so 'You blame me,' she said, 'you blame me even as you blamed me at Brampton Bryan, and with no more justice.'

'At Brampton Bryan!' exclaimed Kelly suddenly.

'M. de Strasbourg! M. de Strasbourg was Scrope.'

Her ladyship nodded.

'And 'twas he attacked you--would have carried you off.'

Her ladyship shivered.

'And I let him go. Curse me! I let him go even as Nick did. But the third time! Oh, only let the third time come.'

Her ladyship shook her head with the most weariful resignation.

'It will come too late, that third time,' she said; 'too late for me. I have no husband who can protect me, and no friend so kind as to serve me in his place.'

'Nay, madam,' cried Kelly, instantly softened by the lonely picture which her words called up in his mind. She was transfigured all at once into Una, Andromeda, Ariadne, or any other young woman of great beauty and virtue who has ever been left desolate to face a wintry world. 'Believe me, you have one friend whose only aspiration is to serve you with his life-blood. 'Faith, madam, had you but shown me your face when first I came to the door of your carriage, I would never have let M. de Strasbourg run away until I had offered you his smoking heart on the point of my sword.'

Her ladyship gave the Parson to understand that she had gone to the ball on the King's service. Had his brain been of its customary sobriety the adventure would doubtless have surprised him more than it did. He might have questioned the nature of the service which took her ladyship to the masquerade. But she had sufficient art to tell him nothing and persuade him that she told all. Moreover, he had other matters to engage him.

There is no need to extend more particularly the old story of a young man's folly with a woman of Lady Oxford's kind. She had sought to hide who she was, she said, because she dared not trust herself; and the fact that she was not living in her own house, which was being repaired, but in one that she had borrowed, with the servants, from a friend who had gone to the Bath, seemed to make her intention possible. But Heaven had been against her. Mr. Kelly was readily beguiled into the sincere opinion that she had fought against her passion, but that her weakness and his transcendent bravery, of which she would by no means allow him to make light, had proved her ruin. It was all in a word set down to gratitude, which was a great virtue, she suggested. Love, indeed, was just the charge of powder which would have never flashed--no never--had not gratitude served as a flint and thrown off the spark.

Well, Mr. Kelly walked home in the dawning of a new day and painted his thoughts with the colours of the sky. For weeks thereafter he seemed in his folly to tread on air; and no doubt he had more than ordinary warrant for his folly. He had a fortune safely lodged with Mr. Child, the goldsmith; his mistress was no less fair than she showed fond; and so fond she was that she could not bring herself to chide the coachman who was discovered the next morning drunk with drugged wine at a tavern near the Haymarket, whither one of Scrope's hirelings had lured him. Mr. Kelly was prosperous in the three great games of life, love, and politics. For he was wholly trusted by the Bishop, by Lord Oxford and the rest; he took his place in the world and went and came from France with hanging matter in his valise. The valise weighed all the lighter for the thought that he was now serving Lady Oxford as well as the King. She was at this time always in his dreams. His passion indeed was in these days extreme, a devouring fire in brain and marrow. He believed her a most loyal conspirator, and, of course, all that he knew came to her ladyship's ears. But his bliss in the affection of Lady Oxford quite blinded him to danger, and he seemed to himself to walk invisible, as though he had the secret of fernseed.

For a season, then, Mr. Kelly was the happy fool, and if the season was short--why, is it ever long? Mr. Wogan is not indeed sure that the Parson has got altogether out of her ladyship's debt, in spite of what happened afterwards. For when the real morning broke and the true love came to him, troubles followed apace upon its coming. It is something to have been a happy fool, if only for a season and though the happiness ended with the folly.

CHAPTER X

[WHAT CAME OF MR. KELLY'S WINNINGS FROM THE SOUTH SEA]

Luck is a chameleon, and in November of that same year 1720, thought fit to change its complexion. The date, to be precise, was the 17th of the month. Mr. Wogan can determine on the particular day, for the reason that Mrs. Barnes carried out her threat, and sent him a laborious long letter concerning the Parson's moral iniquities. The letter reached Mr. Wogan in October, who was then cleaning his ship at Morlaix in Brittany, and what with his fifteen months of purposeless cruises, felt himself as encrusted with idleness as his ship's bottom with barnacles. It was just this eternal inactivity which no doubt induced him to take the serious view of Mrs. Barnes's epistle. 'It is a most cruel affair,' said he to Mr. Talbot, who was with him, 'and of the last importance that I should hurry to London and set it straight.'

'But you are fixed here,' said the Crow, for so Talbot was commonly called from the blackness of his complexion. 'Can I undertake the business for you?'

'No,' says Nick, shaking his head very solemn; though maybe his eye twinkled. Mr. Wogan forgets what point the plot was at then, for since the black year, 1688, there had been but one plot, though it had changed and shifted shape like the faces you see in the dark before you sleep. But he could not hear that anything immediate was intended; and it would be, therefore, the most convenient occasion to refit his ketch Fortune. He gave orders to that effect, travelled to Paris, obtained from General Dillon a month's leave to dispose of his own affairs, and went whistling to London like a schoolboy off on his holidays. For, to tell the truth, he was not greatly concerned at George Kelly's backslidings, but on the contrary was inclined to chuckle over them, and trusted completely to his friend's discretion.

He arrived in London on November 20, and drove boldly to Kelly's lodging in Bury Street. For the Glenshiel affair had completely blown over--there had never been more than a rumour that he was there--and as for the Fifteen, why Mr. Wogan had his pardon like the rest. That he got for his behaviour to Captain Montagu at Preston; moreover, who could know the boy Wogan that ran away from Westminster School, and his task of copying Lord Clarendon's history, in Mr. Hilton, the man of six feet four in his stockings. He found Kelly's lodgings empty.

'A letter came for him three days ago,' explained Mrs. Barnes, 'and he set off almost on the instant in an agitation so great that he did not wait to pack his valise, but had it sent after him.'

'Where to?'

'I do not know,' replied Mrs. Barnes with a sniff of the nose and a toss of the head, 'and no doubt I am a better woman for not knowing.'

'No doubt, replied Wogan gravely. 'But, Mrs. Barnes, who signed the letter? Where did it come from?'

'And how should I know that?' she cried. 'Would I demean myself by reading the letters of a nasty trull? For she's no better for all her birth, and that's not so high neither.'

'Ah,' says Wogan, 'I see you don't know who signed the letter.'

'And that's truth,' said she, 'but I saw the superscription. As for the letter, he hid it in his bosom.'

'Well, that's as good as showing the signature. Who carried his valise after him?'

'Francis Vanlear,' she said, 'the porter who plyed in St. James's Street and Piccadilly and lodged at the Crown ale-house in Germain Street.'

Thither Wogan sent for him, and when he was come asked him whither he had carried the valise.

'To Mr. Gunning's at Mussell Hill,' Vanlear answered, where he had found a horse ready saddled at the door and 'Mr. Johnson' in a great fume to be off.

Wogan gave the porter a crown for his trouble and went forthwith to Mr. Gunning's, whom he had not seen since the occasion of his coming down from Glenshiel. From Mr. Gunning he learned that Kelly had undoubtedly taken the Aberystwith road, since he had left the horse he borrowed at Beaconsfield, and thither had Mr. Gunning sent to fetch it. Kelly's destination was consequently as clear to Wogan as the urgency of his haste, and coming back into London he dropped in at the Cocoa Tree, where he found the story of Lady Oxford and Mr. Kelly a familiar pleasantry.

He heard of it again that night at Will's coffeehouse in Covent Garden, and at Burton's in King Street, where Mr. Kelly was very well known. For, besides being close to Kelly's lodging, it was one of the houses to which his letters were directed under cover. From Burton's Wogan came back to Bury Street, and, while smoking a pipe in the parlour before going to bed, he chanced to notice his strongbox. It stood on the scrutoire by the side of Mr. Kelly's big Bible, where Wogan had left it eighteen months before. It was the brother to Mr. Kelly's strong-box, in every particular but one, and that one a stouter lock. Wogan remembered that when he had placed the box on the scrutoire the key was attached to it by a string. Now, however, he noticed that the key was gone. He was sufficiently curious to cross the room and try the lock. But the box would not open; it was securely locked. There were papers too within it, as he found out by shaking it. Kelly, then, was using the box--but for what purpose? His own box served for his few political papers. Any other papers that needed the shelter of a strong box must be love-letters. Here, then, were amorous, not political epistles. Besides, he was in the habit of burning all those which had done their work, and the rest which he needed he carried about in his own dispatch-box.

'Now, I wonder,' said Wogan, tapping the lid, 'I wonder whether a certain letter, signed--shall we say Smilinda?--and summoning my friend to Brampton Bryan, is locked up inside you.' Wogan's guess hit the truth even to the signature, though he was destined to get little satisfaction from this proof of his sagacity. The letter, he later learned, lay in box with not a few others in the same handwriting, and they all ended in the same manner with a request: 'Burn this.' Mr. Kelly would have been honester had he obeyed it, but, like many a man when passion gets hold of him, he could not part with them. Faint whispers breathed, as it seemed, from Heaven, and caught and written loud in my lady's hand, pure diamonds fetched up from the obscure mines of a woman's heart, sure he treasured them up beyond all jewels, and locked them up in Mr. Wogan's despatch-box to his own undoing.

This letter was, (Wogan learned afterwards) the most laconic of them all, and it was the most momentous. It began, 'My own Strephon,' and then Strephon was crossed out and again written on the top, and it was signed 'Smilinda' in a doubtful hand; as though, at first, Brampton Bryan had recalled to her ladyship the beginning of their affections with so overpowering a compulsion that she must needs use the names which were associated with it, and then the dear woman's modesty timidly crossed them out, and in the end love got the upper hand and wrote them in again. At least that was a small portion of all the great meanings which Kelly read in the hesitation of her ladyship's address. Between the Strephon and the Smilinda there was but one line--'Come; there is a secret. I have great need of you.' But this had been quite enough to send Mr. Kelly spurring out into the November night with such speed that he came to Oxford the next day, where he found the snow lying very deep. The snow troubled him, no doubt, because it delayed him, but he took little account of the cold beyond a sharp pang or two lest Smilinda might have caught a chilblain. For himself--well, Smilinda had need of him--the great lady turned for help to the Irish outlaw. Wasn't it always so? Her Majesty throws her glove to the page, my lord the King Cophetua goes clean daft for a beggar wench, and the obliging Cupid builds a rickety bridge whereby the despairing lovers leap into each other's arms.

Smilinda needed him! There was a tune ravished from Heaven! His whole frame moved to it as the waves to the direction of the moon. It sang in his blood, his heart beat to it, the hooves of his horse drummed it out on the road. Even the boughs of the trees whispered the words with a tender secrecy to the wind, much as the reeds whispered that other saying, ages ago, which the Queen in the fable had entrusted to them. And, 'faith, when you come to think of it, there was little difference in meaning between the two remarks. Smilinda needed Mr. Kelly! It was, after all, as much as to say 'Mr. Kelly has ass's ears.' He made such haste that on the evening of the second day after his departure from London he cantered up the drive of the Manor House.

Lady Oxford met him in the hall, and Mr. Kelly's heart gave a great jump of pride when he saw her stately figure all softened to an attitude of expectation.

'I knew you would come,' she said; and, as Mr. Kelly bent over her hand, she whispered, 'My Strephon,' for all the world as if her emotion choked her. Then she raised her voice for the servants to hear: 'My lord is from home, Mr. Johnson, but he has commissioned me at once to pay you his regrets and to act as his deputy in your business.'

Mr. Kelly was all impatience to broach his business, but her ladyship's solicitude would not allow him to speak until he had supped. She came near to waiting upon him herself, and certainly plied him with her best wine, vowing that it was ill weather for travellers, and that if he kept his glass full beside his elbow it was a sure sign he hated her. This, of course, after the servants had been dismissed. Mr. Kelly chided her for the thought, and, with a shake of the finger, quoted her a text: 'We are bidden not to look upon the wine when it is red,' said he.

'And a very good text, too,' says she; 'so, if you please, shut your eyes and drink it,' and, coming behind him, she laid her cool hand upon his eyes and forehead. So Mr. Kelly drank, and the bumper floated his wits into my lady's haven.

'Now,' says my lady; and, leading the way into her boudoir, she sat herself down before the fire, and, clasping her hands at the back of her head, smiled at Mr. Kelly.

'Strephon,' she murmured on a lilt of her voice, and with all the provocation that witchery could devise. Mr. Kelly was on his knees at her side in a moment. She laid a white hand upon his breast, and, gently holding him off:

'Tell me,' says she, 'why I sent for you.'

'Because my Smilinda needed me,' he answered with a laugh of pride. Her hand caressed his shoulder. She nodded, bit her under lip and smiled very wisely.

'What is the service Strephon can do?' cried Kelly. 'Is it to lift the world? Give me but your love and I'll accomplish that.'

Smilinda clapped her hands with delight, like a child.

'It is nothing so important,' said she. 'It is not in truth any service you can do for me, but rather one that I can do for you.'

Kelly's face lost all its light, and dropped to the glummest disappointment. He had so nursed that aspiration of doing her some great service. Through the night, through the day, it had borne him company. Some great service--that was to be the bridge of Cupid's building whereby they were to stand firm-footed on equal ground. And now it was some service Lady Oxford was to do for him. Lady Oxford noticed the change; it may have been to read the thought which it expressed, and that the thought touched her to unwonted depths. For the smile faded from her lips, her eyes became grave, thoughtful, there was a certain suspense in her attitude.

'Must the woman always owe, the man always pay?' she asked, but in a broken way, and with almost a repugnance for herself. Indeed, she barely finished the question, and then, with an abrupt laugh, crossed to the window, drew aside the curtains, and gazed out upon the darkness and the glimmering snow.

'A strange, cold world,' she said in an absent voice, 'with a strange white carpet.' Mr. Kelly in truth had given her a glimpse into a world yet stranger to her ladyship than that which her eyes beheld--a world that had an odd white carpet too, though the feet of those who paced it as often as not were stained--a world of generous impulses and unselfish devotions. Into this world Lady Oxford was peering with an uneasy curiosity. Perhaps for a moment she compared it with her own; perhaps she was caught by it and admired it; but, if so, it was with a great deal of discomfort. For she dropped the curtain petulantly across the window, and, coming back to the fire--well, what she would have said it is impossible to guess, for a gentle tap on the door was followed by a servant's entrance into the room. He carried a letter on a salver, and, advancing to Lady Oxford, offered it to her.

Now, Mr. Kelly was standing almost at the centre of the mantelpiece, Lady Oxford at one end; and they faced one another. So the man inevitably stopped between them, and, when he lifted up the salver, it was impossible but that the Parson should observe the superscription. He recognised the handwriting of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Lady Oxford recognised it too, for she flushed as she picked the letter up. But she flushed deeper as she read it through, and then crumpled it up and flung it into the fire with an anger which showed very clearly she would have done the like for Lady Mary were the writer instead of her letter within reach of her vindictive fingers.

'A strange, incomprehensible creature is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,' said Lady Oxford with a laugh and a glance at Mr. Kelly. 'The most whimsical contradiction. She offers you a kindness with one hand and slaps you in the face with the other. For instance, this letter here. 'Twas written out of pure kindness. It completes the friendliest service, yet it ends with so rough a jest that but for Strephon's sake I should be much drawn to reject the service.'

'For my sake? 'asked Kelly.

'Why, to be sure. Lady Mary gave me a piece of news a week ago in town. It was that news which made me send for you, and she writes now expressly to confirm it. But, let my Strephon answer me,' and she asked whether he had yet sent his winnings from the Mississippi to be used for the King's service.

Now, Mr. Kelly was, after all, a human being. It was all very well in the first flush of prosperity to propose to scatter his few thousands, but afterwards he had come to see that they would not go so very far. Besides, he had now obvious reasons for desiring to cut as agreeable a figure as he could. At all events the money still remained with Mr. Child, the goldsmith, and so he told her ladyship, with a little remorse.

'Then,' she cried in joy,' that chance has come for which Smilinda has been longing. My presents, Strephon, you have always refused,' which was true enough; indeed, on the other hand, she had Mr. Kelly's royal snuff-box and a few of his jewels. 'But now I can make your fortune, and with yours my own. There's the sweetness of it,' she said, and clasped her hands on her heart. 'Your fortune, too!'

'My fortune you have made already,' said he, with other compliments proper to the occasion. But her ladyship was in a practical mood.

'Listen,' says she. 'I am made acquainted that the tide has turned. I mean, you know, in the Straits of Magellan. The South-Sea stock that has been falling so long will certainly rise in a week; the Elector is buying secretly. Lady Mary has it from Mr. Pope, and he at the first and best hands from Mr. Craggs, the secretary. Mr. Craggs will insert my name in the next list and your money I shall send to the directors with my own. You shall be rich, Strephon, on the level of your merits.'

Mr. Kelly was very well content with his one speculation, but the evident joy with which Lady Oxford anticipated serving him was worth more than his thousands.

'My gold shall be in Smilinda's coffers the morning that I get back to town, 'he said.

'You must go at once,' she exclaimed, 'we must lose no time. Stay. I will travel with you to-morrow morning if you will favour me with your company'; and so a new flow of compliments carried the South Sea out of sight. But a minute or two later Mr. Kelly, chancing to look down at the hearth, said, quite inconsequently:

'We must not forget to thank Lady Mary.'

Smilinda followed the direction of his eyes, and saw that Lady Mary's letter had tumbled out of the fire and now lay, half burnt, but the other half only curled up and scorched. She shivered as though she was cold, and the better to warm herself knelt down on the hearth-rug. Then she took up the letter (which Kelly must not see) and carelessly tossed it into the fire.

'You know Lady Mary,' she said. 'Yes, you told me.'

'I do, indeed,' said Kelly, with a smile.

'I could wish you did not,' said her ladyship with a frown. Smilinda made it plain that she was jealous. Kelly laughed heartily at the assumption, which was in truth ridiculous enough.

'Who am I,' said he, 'that I should attract Lady Mary's fancy,'

'You are--my Strephon,' replied Smilinda, with a sigh of exquisite tenderness.

Kelly argued the matter on other grounds. Smilinda listened to them all.

'I have no doubt you are right,' she said, with a meek resignation. 'But I remember you spoke very warmly of the friendship you had for her, and ever since--' here she broke off shyly. 'A weak woman's empty fears,' she continued,' but they keep her awake at nights. Well, she must even make the best of them.'

Smilinda lying awake at nights out of jealousy! There was a notion to convict Mr. Kelly of slow murder. He was on his knees in a moment, and swore that for the future on earth and in Heaven he would avoid Lady Mary's company as though she was the devil in person. It was a confused sort of oath and deprived Mr. Kelly for a time of a very good friend; but on the other hand it undoubtedly raised a load from Lady Oxford's anxieties.

She left Brampton Bryan the next morning and travelled with Mr. Kelly up to London, where the coach set them down at the King's Head in the Strand. Kelly went straight from the King's Head to the goldsmith and his money was carried to Queen's Square that same afternoon. It would seem, however, that Mr. Pope had been choused, for the market fell from little to nothing. But when the Bubble presently burst into air, Smilinda burst into tears, and Mr. Kelly was smitten to the heart for her distress.

'I have ruined thee, my Strephon,' she sobbed. She had covered her face with her hands and the tears trickled through her fingers.

'Love arms me against such ill-fortunes,' replied Kelly. 'It is only Smilinda's tears that hurt. Each one of them falls upon Strephon's heart like a drop of molten lead.'

'Ah, Strephon,' she cried. 'Thou art ruined and Smilinda's hapless hand hath dealt the blow. The arrow came from her quiver,' she being one of Dian's nymphs, you are to suppose.

Then Mr. Kelly fell to comparing himself to Procris in the fable, who was shot by her lover, and said that it was sweet to perish by her inadvertent shaft. It seems that kind of love-making has now gone out of date. But that was the humour of it when Kelly and Wogan were young. Men and women, let them but fall in love, and they were all swains and nymphs, though they dabbled in the stocks and were as hard-headed as before and afterwards.

'That odious Lady Mary,' exclaimed Smilinda. 'She was born to be my bane and curse. 'Twas her counsel that ruined my Strephon. My Strephon has kept his oath?'

Her Strephon had, but on the other hand, Mr. Wogan had sworn no oath, and would not have kept it if he had done so. He paid a visit to Lady Mary soon after Kelly's return from Brampton Bryan. She asked him his news and gave him a budget of gossip in return.

'And Lady Oxford has sold her diamonds!' she ended.

Wogan asked how that came about, and she answered:

'Lady Oxford was here at the bassette table three weeks since. Her stakes were ever inordinately high, and she lost to me all night. She drew a queen when she should have chose the knave, the knave was Sonica. "There go my diamonds," she said, and vowing she would punt no more, went home in her chair. I could not see her or hear of her for a little. I guessed that she had run away into the country until she could wheedle enough money to pay me out of the dotard husband. So at a venture I wrote a polite letter to her, hoping that the country air would restore her credit. Well, here she is back in London and her losses paid. That means selling her diamonds.'

Wogan laughed over Lady Oxford's straits and came home to the lodging in Bury Street. Wogan's time was getting short and he must return to Morlaix. But, as has been said, he left Brittany in a hurry with very little money in his pocket, and what was left at his journey's end he had since spent in London. So he said to the Parson:

'George, my friend, I must dip into your winnings after all. For here am I with a couple of crowns,' he took them out and laid them on the table. George flushed crimson.

'Nick,' said he, 'you have two crowns more than I have.'

Wogan turned away to the window and looked out into the street, bethinking him of what Lady Mary had told him.

'Sure, Nick, it's the truth,' Kelly pleaded, entirely miscomprehending Wogan's action. 'I drew the money out of the Mississippi and sunk it in the South Sea. It's all gone. I have not two penny pieces to rub together until this day week, when my pension is paid. Nick, you'll believe that. Why, Nick, you would ha' been welcome to all that I had. But you know that. Sure you know it.'

Wogan had no such mean thought as Kelly in his fluster attributed to him. He turned back to the table.

'So you are as poor as an Irish church mouse again, are you?' he said with a smile. 'Well, here's two crowns--one for me, one for you.'

He pocketed one coin and pushed the other over to the Parson. The Parson took it up and turned it over blinking his eyes. For a moment there was an awkward sort of silence. Wogan laughed; the Parson blew his nose.

'I hear,' said Wogan, 'that Lady Oxford has lost her diamonds.'

Kelly looked up in perplexity.

'Lost her diamonds!' said he. 'Why, she wore them last night!'

'I thought the rumour was untrue,' said Wogan.

Mr. Kelly slipped his crown into his pocket. There was no more said about the matter between them, though perhaps they clasped hands at parting with a trifle more than their ordinary heartiness.

Mr. Wogan, however, told Lady Mary of the Parson's loss, and she was at no pains to discover the explanation. Lady Oxford had paid Lady Mary with the Parson's guineas. They had never been in the South Sea Bubble.

'I should like to send the money I won back to Mr. Kelly,' said Lady Mary.

'That's plainly impossible,' returned Wogan, and to this Lady Mary perforce agreed. 'Olet,' the Latin-learned lady said, and Wogan remarked, 'Certainly,' so she put the money aside, thinking that some day she might employ it on Mr. Kelly's behalf. That night Wogan borrowed his travelling money from Mr. Carte, the historian, whom he met at the Cocoa Tree, and so set out the next morning for Brittany.

CHAPTER XI

[THE PARSON DEPARTS FROM SMILINDA AND LEARNS A NUMBER OF UNPALATABLE TRUTHS]

Mr. Wogan then returned to Morlaix, and, finding his ketch by this time cleaned and refitted, and two others (the Revolution, a big ship of 40 guns, under Morgan, which was afterwards seized by Commodore Scot at Genoa, and the Lady Mary, a smaller vessel of 14 guns, commanded by Captain Patrick Campbell) at anchor in the harbour, he set sail for the Downs. There they picked up four thousand small arms and a couple of hundred kintals of cannon powder, for traffic, it was alleged, on the coasts of Brazil and Madagascar. But the arms and ammunition travelled no further than Bilboa, where they were stored in the country house of Mr. Brown, an Irish merchant of that part, against the next expedition to England. At Bilboa the three ships parted, and Mr. Wogan, taking in upon freight such goods as he could get, sailed to Genoa, and lay there behind the Mole.

Nor was the Parson to tarry long behind him in London; for less than a fortnight after Wogan's departure, he was sent to carry to Rome, for the Chevalier's approval, a scheme of a lottery for raising a quarter of a million pounds, which Mr. Christopher Layer (later hanged) most ingeniously imagined. With the scheme he carried some silk stockings as a present for the Chevalier and his spouse. This was none of the Bishop of Rochester's work, who knew nothing of Mr. Layer, and of what was later plotted by bold and impatient spirits. The Parson had sad work parting with Smilinda, but made light of the separation to save the lady from distress, and she had happily broken a bank at pharo that same night, which withheld her from entirely breaking her heart. Still, it was as affecting an affair as one could wish for.

The Parson received certain orders of Atterbury's as to business with General Dillon, the Chevalier's manager in Paris, just before he was to start; and, coming from the Deanery at Westminster where the Bishop resided, he walked at once through Petty France to Queen's Square. Lady Oxford's house was all in a blaze of light with figures moving to and fro upon the blinds of the windows. 'Mr. Johnson' was announced, but for some little while could not get a private word with her ladyship, and so stood of one side, taking his fill of that perfumed world of fans and hoops, of sparkling eyes and patches and false hearts wherein Lady Oxford so fitly moved. Many of the faces which flitted before his eyes were strange to him, but one he remarked in particular--a strong, square sort of face set on the top of an elegant figure that wore the uniform of the King's Guards. Mr. Kelly had seen that face under the oil-lamp of a portico in Ryder Street on the occasion when he and Nicholas Wogan set out on their first journey to Brampton Bryan, and the officer who owned the face was now a certain Colonel Montague.

Kelly remarked him because he was playing at the same table with her ladyship, and losing his money to her with all the grace in the world. At last Lady Oxford rose, and, coming towards him:

'Well?' she murmured, 'my Strephon is pale.'

'I leave for Rome to-morrow morning,' he returned in a whisper. At that her hand went up to her heart, and she caught her breath.

'Wait,' said she, and went back to her cards. As the guests were departing some two hours later, she called to Kelly openly.

'Mr. Johnson leaves for Paris to-morrow morning, and has the great kindness to carry over some of my brocades, which indeed need much better repairing than they can get in London.'

It made an excuse for Mr. Johnson to stay, but none the less provoked a smile here and there; and Colonel Montague, deliberately coming to a stop a few paces from Kelly, took careful stock of him. The Colonel did not say a word, but just looked him over. Mr. Kelly was tickled by the man's impudence, and turned slowly round on his heels to give him an opportunity of admiring his back. Then he faced him again. The Colonel gravely bowed his thanks for Mr. Kelly's politeness, Mr. Kelly as gravely returned the bow, and the Colonel stalked out of the door. It was in this way that Mr. Kelly and the Colonel first met.

But the moment Smilinda and Strephon were left alone!

'Oh,' wailed Smilinda, and her arms went round Strephon's neck. 'Heureuse en jeu, malheureuse en amour. O fatal cards, would that I had lost this dross!' cries she, with her eyes on the glittering heap of guineas and doubloons strewed about the table. 'Oh, Strephon, thou wilt forget me in another's arms. I dread the French syrens.'

And then Mr. Kelly to the same tune:

'Never will I forget Smilinda. If I come back with the King, and he makes me a Bishop, with a pastoral crook, thy Strephon will still be true.'

Whereat the lady laughed, though Kelly was jesting with a heavy heart, and vowed that Lady Mary would write a ballad on 'Strephon, or the Faithful Bishop.' Then she fell into a story of lovely Mrs. Tusher, the Bishop of Ealing's wife, who was certainly more fair than faithful. Next she wept again, and so yawned, and gave him her portrait in miniature.

'You will not part with it--never--never,' she implored.

The portrait was beautifully set with diamonds.

'It shall be buried with me,' said Kelly, and so Lady Oxford let him go, but called him back again when he was through the door to make him promise again that he would not part with her portrait. Mr. Kelly wondered a little at her insistence, but set it down to the strength of her affection. So he departed from the cave of the enchantress with many vows of mutual constancy and went to Rome, and from Rome he came back to Genoa, where he fell in with Nicholas Wogan.

Mr. Wogan remembers very well one night on which the pair of them, after cracking a bottle in Grimble's tavern, came down to the water-gate and were rowed on board of Wogan's ketch. This was in the spring of the year 1721, some four or five months since the Parson had left England, and Wogan thought it altogether a very suitable occasion for what he had to say. He took the Parson down into his cabin, and there, while the lamp flecked the mahogany panels with light and shade, and the water tinkled against the ship's planks as it swung with the tide, he told him all that he had surmised of Lady Oxford's character, and how Lady Mary had corroborated his surmises. At the first Mr. Kelly would hear nothing of his arguments.

'It is pure treason,' said he. 'From any other man but you, Nick, I would not have listened to more than a word, and that word I would have made him eat. But I take it ill even from you. Why do you tell me this now? Why did you not tell it me in London, when I could have given her ladyship a chance of answering the slander?'

'Why,' replied Wogan, 'because I know very well the answer she would have made to you--a few words of no account whatever, and her soft arms about your neck, and you'd have been convinced. But now, when you have not seen her for so long, there's a chance you may come to your senses. Did you never wonder what brought Scrope to Brampton Bryan?'

'No need for wonder since she told me.'

'She told you, did she? Well, I'm telling you now, and do you sit there until I have told you, for Mr. Scrope's history you are going to hear. Bah, leave that bodkin of a sword alone. If you draw it, upon my soul I'll knock you down and kneel on your chest. Mr. Scrope went before you in her ladyship's affections.'

Here Mr. Kelly flinched as though he had been struck, and thereafter sat with a white stern face as though he would not condescend to answer the insinuation. 'Sure he was a gentleman--out of Leicestershire, and of some fortune, which fortune Lady Oxford spent for him. He was besides a sad, pertinacious fellow, and nothing would content him but she must elope with him from her old husband, and make for themselves a Paradise on the Rhine. It appears that he talked all the old nonsense--they were man and wife in the sight of God, and the rest of it. Her ladyship was put to it for shifts and excuses, and at the last, what with his money being almost spent, and his suit more pressing, she fled into the country where we met her. Scrope was no better than a kitten before its eyes are opened, and, getting together what was left of his fortune, followed her with a chaise, meaning to carry her off there and then. However, he found us there, and I take it that opened his eyes. And I would have you beware of Mr. Scrope, George. A kitten becomes a cat, and a cat has claws. It is Lady Mary's thought that you have not heard the last of him, for his conscience hath made him a kind of gentleman spy on the honest party.'

George, who in spite of himself could not but see how exactly Wogan's account fitted in with and explained Scrope's attempt after the masquerade, caught at Lady Mary's name with an eager relief.

'Ah, it was she gave you this flimsy story,' he cried, leaning forward over the table. 'There's more malice in it than truth, Nick. The pair of them have been at loggerheads this long while. Lady Mary never could suffer a woman who can hold her own against her. Why, Nick, you have been gulled,' and he lit his pipe, which he had let go out.

'Oh, and have I? Well, at all events, I have not stripped myself of every penny in order to pay Lady Oxford's losses at cards. Scrope is not the only man whom her ladyship has sucked dry.'

'What do you mean?' cried Kelly, letting his pipe slip out of his fingers and break on the floor. Wogan told him of his visit to Lady Mary, and the story was so circumstantial, the dates of the loss at cards and the payment so fitted with Lady Oxford's message to Kelly and her proposal as to the placing of his fortune, that it could not but give him pause.

'It is not true,' was all he could find to say, and 'I'll not believe it,' and so fell to silence.

'You'll be wanting another pipe,' said Wogan. He fetched one from a cupboard and filled it. The two men smoked for a while in silence. Then Kelly burst out of a sudden:

'Nick, the fool that I was ever to preach that sermon in Dublin,' and stopped. Wogan knew well enough what the Parson meant. His thoughts had gone back to the little parsonage, and the rambling cure of half a dozen parishes, and the quiet library, and evenings by the inn-fire, where he would tell his little trivial stories of the day's doings. It was always that dream he would play with and fondle when the world went wrong with him, though to be sure, could the dream have come true, he would have been the unhappiest man that ever breathed Irish air.

'Shall we go on deck?' Wogan proposed.

It was a fine clear night, but there was no moon. The riding-lights of ships at anchor were dotted about the harbour, the stars blazed in a rich sky; the water rippled black and seemed to flash sparks where the lights struck it; outside the harbour the Mediterranean stretched away smooth as a slab of marble. Kelly stood in the chains while Wogan paced up and down the deck. The Parson was in for his black hour, and silent companionship is the only alleviation for the trouble. After a time he came towards Wogan and caught him by the arm, but so tight that Wogan could feel his friend's finger-nails through the thick sleeves of his coat.

'I'll not believe it,' Kelly argued; but it was against himself he was arguing now, as Wogan perceived, and had the discretion to hold his tongue. ''Faith,' he continued, 'she came into my life like a glint of the sun into a musty dark room,' and then he suddenly put his hand into his bosom and drew out something at which he looked for a moment. He laughed bitterly and swung his arm back. Before, however, he could throw that something into the sea Wogan caught his hand.

'Sure,' said he, 'I saw a sparkle of diamonds.'

Kelly opened his hand and showed a miniature.

'Lady Oxford's diamonds,' he answered bitterly, 'which she did not sell, but gave out of a loving, generous heart.'

'George, you're moon-struck,' said Wogan. 'Diamonds, after all, are always diamonds.'

'True,' said Kelly, 'and I promised never to part with them,' he sneered. He put the miniature back in his pocket, and then dropping his arm to his side said,

'Put me ashore, Nick. I will see you to-morrow. I am very tired.'

But in the morning he was gone, and a few days later Nick, who was not spared certain prickings of conscience for the hand he had taken in bringing about the Parson's misfortunes (he had just now, by hindering him from throwing away the miniature, taken more of a hand than he guessed), sailed out from Genoa.

The rest of that year '21 was a busy time for all engaged in forwarding the Great Affair. England itself seemed ripe for the attempt, and it was finally determined to hazard it in the spring of the next year, when the Elector would be in Hanover. The new plan was that the exiled Duke of Ormond, whom the soldiers were thought to love, should sail from Spain with the Earl Marischal, Morgan, and Halstead, commanding some ragged regiments of Mr. Wogan's countrymen. The Duke was to land in the west, the King was to be at Antwerp ready to come over, and the young Prince Charles of Wales, who would then be not quite two years old, was to be carried to the Highlands. A mob was to be in readiness in town, with arms secretly buried; the soldiers were expected to declare for High Church and Ormond; and in a word the 'honest party' was to secure its interest on its own bottom, without foreign help, which the English people has never loved. The rich lords, but not Bishop Atterbury, knew of the beginning of this scheme, but abandoned it. They did not know, or only Lords North and Grey knew, that the scheme lived on without them.

Mr. Kelly therefore had his hands full, and it was very well for him that it was so. There were things at stake of more moment than his love-affairs, as he was the first to recognise. Yet, even so, he had time enough, in the saddle and on the sea, to plumb the black depths of his chagrin and to toss to and fro that shuttlecock of a question, whether he should accuse her ladyship for her trickeries or himself for misdoubting her. However, he got a complete answer to that question before the year was out. It was his habit now, whenever he was in London, to skulk out of sight and knowledge of Lady Oxford, to avoid theatres, routs, drums, and all places where she might be met, and Mr. Carte the historian took his place when it was necessary to visit Lord Oxford in the country. Mr. Carte had a ready pretence, for Lord Oxford kept a great store of old manuscripts concerning the history of the country, and these beauties, it is to be feared, came somewhat between Mr. Carte and his business, just as her ladyship's eyes had come between Mr. Kelly's and his. Accordingly the Parson saw little of her ladyship and heard less, since his friends avoided all mention of her and he himself asked no questions.

'Saw little,' and the phrase is intended. For often enough of an evening his misery would fetch him out of the coffee houses and lead him like a man blindfold to where her ladyship was accustomed to visit. There he would stand in the darkness of the street until the door opened and Lady Oxford, all smiles and hooped petticoats, would trip gaily out to her chair. But very likely habit--the habit of her conversation and appearance--had as much to do with this particular folly as any despairing passion. How many lovers the wide world over fancy they are bemoaning their broken hearts, when they are only deploring their broken habits! Well, Mr. Kelly, at all events, took the matter au grand sérieux, and so one night saw her ladyship come out from the porch of Drury Lane theatre in company with Colonel Montague.

There is one unprofitable piece of knowledge which a man acquires who has ever had a woman make love to him; he knows when that woman is making love to someone else. Lady Oxford's modest droop of the head when the Colonel spoke, her shy sidelong smile at him, her red lips a trifle parted as though his mere presence held her in a pleased suspense--all these tokens were familiar to Mr. Kelly as his daily bread, and he went home eating his own heart, and nursing a quite unjustifiable resentment against Nicholas Wogan for that he ever saved the Colonel's life. It did not take Kelly long to discover that his suspicions were correct. A few questions to his friends, who for his sake had kept silence, and the truth was out. Lady Oxford's constancy had lasted precisely seven weeks before the Whig colonel had stepped into the Jacobite parson's shoes. Mr. Kelly put his heart beneath his heel and now stamped her image out of it. Then he went upon his way, and the King's business took him to Avignon.

CHAPTER XII

[THE PARSON MEETS SCROPE FOR THE THIRD TIME, AND WHAT CAME OF THE MEETING]

It was early in the year 1722 when Mr. Kelly came to la ville sonnante, and took a lodging at L'Auberge des Papes in the Rue des Trois Faucons. He brought with him a sum of 5,000l. collected in England, and this sum he was to hand over to a messenger from the Duke of Ormond, who was then at Corunna in Spain, and, what with his disbursements in the purchase of arms, and the support of Irish troops, was hard put to it for money.

It was therefore of the last importance that this sum should come safe to Corunna, and so extraordinary precautions were taken to ensure that result. The Parson, since he did not know who the messenger might be, was to wait every morning between the hours of nine and ten on the first bench to the left of the Porte du Rhone in the boulevard outside the city walls, until a man should ask him if he had any comfortable greeting for Aunt Anne, that being the cant name for the Duke. This man was thereafter to prove to Mr. Kelly's satisfaction that he was indeed the messenger expected.

Now, the messenger was delayed in his journey, and so for a week George Kelly, having deposited his money with Mr. Philabe, the banker, sat every morning on his bench with what patience he might. He came in consequence to take particular notice of an oldish man and a rosebud of a girl who walked along the boulevard every morning at the time that he was waiting. They were accompanied by a French poodle dog, and indeed it was the poodle dog which first attracted Mr. Kelly's attention to the couple. It has already been said that Mr. Kelly had a trick of catching a woman's eyes, though this quality implies no great merit. On the other hand he drew dogs and children to him, and that implies a very great merit, as you may observe from this, that there is never a human being betwixt here and Cathay will admit that dogs and children have a dislike for him.

The poodle dog, then, comes to a halt opposite Mr. Kelly's bench on the very first morning that he sat there, cocks his ears, lifts a forefoot from the ground, and, looking after the old man and the young girl, says plain as print, 'Here, wait a bit! There's something on this bench very well worth looking into.' However, his master and mistress were in a close conversation and so the poodle puts his foot on the ground and trots after them. But the next morning he came up to the bench, puts his head of one side to display the fine blue riband round his neck, squats on his haunches, and flops a paw on to the Parson's knee.

'How d'ye do?' says the Parson politely.

'I think I'll stretch myself, thank you,' says the poodle, and promptly proceeds to do so, using Mr. Kelly's knee as a purchase for his paws. He was still engaged upon this exercise when his young mistress missed him. She whistled; the poodle looked at the Parson with the clearest invitation.

'Won't you come too?'

'I have not been presented,' replied the Parson.

Thereupon the girl turned round.

'Harlequin,' she called to the dog, and showed Mr. Kelly as sweet a face as a young man ever deserved to see. It was fresh and clear as the morning dew, with frank eyes and a scarlet bow of a mouth ready for a laugh. 'Harlequin!' said Mr. Kelly to himself with a start, as he looked towards the girl. Harlequin trotted off to his mistress, and got prettily chided for his forwardness, of which chiding he made little or no account, and very properly. It is not every dog that achieves immortality by stretching itself against a stranger's knee. But Harlequin did. For had Harlequin not made Mr. Kelly's acquaintance, he would never have found a niche in Mr. Swift's verses.

Now let me tell you plainly, Sir,
Our witness is a real cur,
A dog of spirit for his years,
Has twice two legs, two hanging ears,
His name is Harlequin, I wot,
And that's a name in every plot:

* * * * *

His answers were extremely witty
Before the secret wise Committee;
Confest as plain as he could bark,
Then with his fore-foot left his mark:

wrote the Dean of St. Patrick's concerning this very poodle dog of Miss Rose Townley.

For Rose Townley was the girl's name, as the Parson now knew, and the old gentleman was her father, who had tended Mr. Nicholas Wogan after his wounds in the year '15 at Preston. Mr. Wogan had more than once spoken to Kelly of Dr. Townley and his daughter Rose, who had retired to Avignon, after the Rising, and he had made mention of their poodle Harlequin, of which poodle the present or reigning dog, Harlequin II., was the son and heir. So that, hearing the name called out by Rose, Kelly was aware who the two people were. Dr. Townley had been suspected in the Rising, and therefore had settled at Avignon as physician to the Duke of Ormond, and when the nobleman left the town, remained because he was grown old, and had lost his taste for politics and warrings. He had, moreover, received his pardon for his share in the struggle, and was indeed at this very time preparing to return into England. But of this Kelly was not aware.

The next morning Kelly was again on his bench, and again Dr. Townley and his daughter passed him. Harlequin came forward at once to wish the Parson good-morning. Rose spoke to her father, plainly telling him of Harlequin's new friendship, for the Doctor looked up towards Mr. Kelly and the girl looked away. In consequence there sprang up a queer sort of acquaintance between the Doctor and his daughter on the one hand, and Parson Kelly on the other. Every morning they looked for him on his bench; every morning he had a few words with Harlequin.

Doubtless he would have pursued the acquaintance further, but for Rose. She it was who kept the Parson from approaching Dr. Townley. For he was still sore with Lady Oxford's treacheries, and feminine beauty was vanitas vanitatum to him. Moreover, though he had snatched her ladyship's image out of his heart, some of her sayings had stuck in his mind, and amongst her sayings not a few were aimed at girls. Smilinda was a woman, and saw a rival in each youthful beauty. 'Girls of our time,' she would say with a sneer, 'were very kind, at all events, whatever one might think of their looks. And to hear them speak of marriage, why one would fancy oneself in the company of rakes dressed up like the other sex for a masquerade.' She would gloat over the misadventures of poor Mistress Dolly Walpole, the Minister's sister, by the hour, she had even written a ballad thereon, 'The Dolliad,' and since Mr. Kelly had never had been much in the society of young unmarried women, he had insensibly imbibed a deal of Smilinda's philosophy upon this head. And so he waited for the messenger in silence.

Now, upon the fourth day Mr. Philabe the banker sent round for the Parson to L'Auberge des Papes, and, when he was come, told him that on that morning a man called at the bank with a letter which he gave to a clerk. The clerk carried the letter to Mr. Philabe, who opened it. It enclosed a second letter superscribed to Mr. George Kelly, and prayed the banker to add to the superscription Mr. Kelly's address. This Mr. Philabe would not do, but sent out word that he would take care the letter came into Kelly's hands. The man, however, who had brought it immediately replied that it was of the last importance the letter should be delivered at once: otherwise there was no use in delivering it at all. If Mr. Philabe would send a messenger at once, well and good; if not, would he kindly return the letter forthwith.

This request roused Mr. Philabe's suspicions. For if he sent a messenger, as he was prayed to do, the man could follow him, and as easily discover the address as if Philabe had written it on the note. He replied consequently that neither could he accede to this request, but that Mr. Kelly should most certainly have the letter that day.

Upon this the man insisted that the letter should be returned to him, but the more strenuously he insisted, the stronger became Mr. Philabe's suspicions, until he determined not to part with the letter at all, and the man finally went away very ill-pleased.

Mr. Philabe, as he told this story, handed the letter to Mr. Kelly, who broke open the seal, and found nothing but a clean sheet of paper.

'Little doubt,' said he, 'why the fellow wanted his letter back. It is a pure trick to know where I lodge. What was he like?'

'He wore a travelling-dress,' said Mr. Philabe, 'and a cocked hat.'

'And very likely a pair of boots,' added Kelly. 'But this tells me very little of his looks.'

Mr. Philabe was a poor hand at a description, and beyond that the man had a nose, two eyes, a mouth, two legs, and a pair of arms, Kelly learned nothing whatever of his appearance.

That very day, however, the mystery was to be made clear. Between daylight and dark Mr. Kelly chanced to walk up the narrow Rue St. Agricole, and had just come abreast of the broad flight of steps which leads upwards to the church, when a man leaped down in front of him.

'I beg your pardon,' said the Parson politely stepping aside.

'That is not enough,' said the other, and, turning on his heel, he faced Kelly and barred the way.

Kelly recognised the voice, recognised the face.

'Ah,' cried he, 'Mr. Scrope.' His first feeling was one almost of exultation. In the face of his enemy he forgot altogether that there was no longer any amorous reason for his enmity. He almost forgot, too, what he had heard from Wogan about Mr. Scrope's supposed quality as a gentleman spy. 'The third time,' he said with a laugh. 'I promised myself the third time.'

Scrope nodded his head.

'We are of one mind, then.' He looked up and down the street. It was empty from end to end. 'There is a little square terrace at the top of these steps, with blank walls upon the two sides, and the church door upon the third. The terrace will be very suitable and quiet.'

He turned as he spoke and set a foot upon the lowest step.

'One moment,' said Kelly. During Scrope's words he had reflected. Scrope and himself, politics apart, were really in the like case. For if he had followed Scrope in her ladyship's caprices, Montague had followed him, 'as Amurath to Amurath succeeds.' His enmity quite died away, and gave place to something very like a fellow-feeling. Moreover, he had to consider the messenger from the Duke of Ormond and the 5,000l. in Mr. Philabe's keeping.

'One moment,' he said. Scrope stopped with a sneer.

'If you can remain a few days at Avignon,' he continued, 'I shall be happy to oblige you in whatever you will. For the moment I have duties.'

'Of course,' interrupted Scrope. 'Duties are wonderful convenient things when one's bones are in danger. The pious Æneas knew that very well, Mr. Kelly; but then the worthy army-chaplain had not a Scrope upon his heels for the best part of a twelvemonth.'

'Oh,' cried Kelly, 'then it is you who have followed me.' More than once he had heard that his steps were dogged.

'Over a wearisome stretch of Europe,' agreed Scrope.

'It was you who came to Philabe this morning?'

'Who else? So, you see, I have been at some pains to come up with you, and those duties must wait.'

'Those duties,' replied Kelly, 'are so urgent that I am in two minds whether to take to my heels.'

To any man who was acquainted with the Parson this statement would have been proof enough that there was all the necessity in the world for delay. But then Scrope knew very little of his opponent, and:

'I am not at all surprised to hear that,' he replied contemptuously.

Mr. Kelly reddened at the sneer, but kept a tight hold upon his patience.

'Understand me,' said he quietly. 'If I ran away now, I should most certainly follow you afterwards, as you have followed me, and when I came up with you I should kill you.'

'And understand me,' broke in Scrope. His cold, sneering face suddenly lighted up with a fierce passion. 'Neither you will follow me, nor I you. We stand face to face, as I have hoped we should until I have dreamed the hope true. You have robbed me of what I held most precious. You have done worse. You have proved to me that what I held most precious was never worth so much as a cracked farthing. That morning I came to Brampton Bryan, I came at Lady Oxford's bidding. We were to have done with pretences for good and all. Oh, she had forgotten, if you will, but if she had forgotten, who made her forget? You, Mr. Kelly, the sneaking cuckoo! I would have worn her proudly, for all the world to see--the star upon my coat, the scarf across my breast. I would have faced my fellows with one arm for her waist, and the other for a naked sword to silence their slanders with. Well, there's no waist, but there's still the naked sword.' As he spoke, with his left hand he jerked his sword out of the scabbard, and caught it by the hilt with his right. 'There's still the naked sword,' he laughed, with a sort of thrill in the laugh, and made the blade whistle through the air. There's still the sword and a vile cuckoo of a parson--'

'That's enough,' cried Kelly, marching to the steps in an anger now not a whit less than Scrope's, for there was a certain sting of truth in Scrope's abuse which put him to shame; 'more than enough.'

'No, not more than enough,' said Scrope quietly, and he followed.

'You want a little more?' said Kelly, who had reflected. 'Very well; your heroics may be candid enough, but it is less Mr. Scrope the lover and rival than Mr. Scrope, the spy, that I regard with a certain misliking.'

'Assez, you die!' said Scrope, with a hiss in his voice.

The space at the top of the steps was a pretty enough spot for their purpose. It was open only on the side towards the street, which was quite deserted, and raised so high above the pathway that a passer-by would see nothing of what was doing. On the other hand, however, the light was failing. Scrope was for bringing the encounter to a speedy end, and drove at the Parson in an impetuous fury. His sword glittered and darted very chill and cold in that grey twilight. He thrust swift as a serpent.

The blood of the Parson was also up. He had at first regarded Scrope's challenge as a pure piece of irony. Why should two men fight for a hilding who had equally jilted and cheated the pair? That had been George's first thought; but now his rapier was drawn for the Cause, and to rid it of a dangerous enemy. Scrope was probably on the track of Ormond and the gold, as well as on that of his rival.

The Parson was as brave as steel, but (though he never knew it) was no true master of the play. The men rushed at each other; their swords were locked, they were breast to breast; George wrenched his blade free, leaped back to get his distance, struck his heel against a cobble, and the next moment he felt Scrope's blade burn into his side. Kelly clasped his hand over the wound, and sank on to the ground. The blood came through between his fingers; he snatched the cravat from his neck, and made a poor shift to bandage it about his body. The one thought in his mind was of the Duke of Ormond's messenger. Perhaps the very next morning he might come to Avignon and find no one on the bench.

'A surgeon,' he whispered to Scrope, saving his breath. Scrope was quietly wiping his sword, and made no reply.

'A surgeon,' repeated Kelly. 'I must live.'

'Or die,' said Scrope carelessly. He pulled on his coat, and came close to Kelly. Then he suddenly felt in his pockets.

'No,' he said, with an air of disappointment. 'I was hoping that I had a copy of Virgil wherewith to soothe your last moments. Shall I take a message to her ladyship?' He picked up his hat. 'Or shall I ask Mr. Nicholas Wogan to write a ballad--"Strephon's Farewell to his Smilinda"? Mr. Wogan would, I think, be extremely amusing with so pathetical a subject for his Muse. Well, it grows late. You will, no doubt, excuse me.'

He made a bow to the Parson, clapped his hat on his head, and walked, whistling to the steps. He stopped when he had descended a couple of them, and, turning, shook his head thoughtfully at Kelly.

'But I am grieved I have no Virgil,' he said, and so disappeared below the level of the terrace.

Kelly listened till the sound of his feet died slowly down the street. Then he began to drag himself painfully upon his knees towards the steps. He did not dare to get to his feet, lest his blood should flow faster from his wound. He did not dare to shout. He crawled forward over the flags for miles, it seemed; then the knot of the bandage got loose, and a great faintness came over him. With fumbling fingers he re-tied the knot; the flags began to heave before his eyes like waves of the sea, the silence roared in his ears. He looked upwards, and a spinning procession of houses and churches turned him giddy. He sank down on his side, and then he was aware of something wet that rasped along his hand. He looked down. There was a joyous little bark, and the something wet rasped along his check.

'Harlequin!' he thought, with a pang of hope. He summoned all his strength, all his will; the houses ceased to spin. He let himself down to his full length, with great care drew a scrap from one pocket, a pencil from the other, and laboriously wrote. Then he poked the paper underneath the ribbon round the poodle's neck. 'Home!' he cried, clapping his hands; and fainted.

But ten minutes afterwards Miss Rose Townley unfolded a slip of paper, with here and there the mark of a bloody thumb, and written on it these words, 'Help Harlequin's friend'; and at her feet a bright-eyed poodle dog stood, wagging his tail, ready to conduct her to the spot where Harlequin's friend lay in sore need.

CHAPTER XIII

[OF THE ROSE AND THE ROSE-GARDEN IN AVIGNON.]

Life is not wholly the lopsided business that some would have you esteem it. Here was the Parson paying, with a sword-thrust of the first quality, for a love-affair that was dead already; over and ended. That was bad, but, to balance his accounts, the Parson waked up from his swoon in Dr. Townley's house, with the Doctor's beautiful daughter, Rose, to be his nurse-tender. Lady Oxford had caused his duel with Scrope, to be sure, but she had thereby, as it were, cast him straight into the girl's arms, and in that very condition which was likely to make her most tender to him. Carry the conceit a little farther, and you'll see that here was Mr. Kelly, through her ladyship's behaviours, imprisoned in the hands of one of those very creatures which she was ever persuading him to avoid: namely, that terrible monster a girl, and she very young, frank, and beautiful. When the Parson came to his senses, he called Dr. Townley to his side, and telling him who he was, and how that, being a friend of Mr. Wogan's, he knew the doctor from hearing his daughter call the dog Harlequin, he continued:

'You were at Preston with my friend, and I therefore have the less reluctance in asking a service of you beyond those you have already done me;' and he began to tell the Doctor of the expected messenger from Spain whom he was to meet on the boulevard.

But the Doctor interrupted him.

'Mr. Wogan is indeed my friend, though I have seen nothing of him these past six years; and his name is a passport into our friendship, as my daughter will assure you. So, Mr. Kelly, such kindness and hospitality as we can show you you may count upon; but--well, I had my surfeit of politics at Preston. I have no longer any faith in your cause, in your King. I do not think that he will come before the coming of the Coquecigrues. I am, indeed, leaving Avignon in a few months, and hope for nothing better than a peaceful life in some village of my own country under the King who now sits on the throne.

This he said very kindly, but with a certain solemnity which quite closed Mr. Kelly's lips; and so, giving him a sleeping potion, the Doctor left the room. In spite of the potion, however, the Parson made but a restless night of it, and more than once from under his half-closed lids he saw the doctor come to his bedside; but towards morning he fell into something of a sleep and woke up in the broad daylight with a start, as a man will who has something on his mind. In a minute or two Mr. Kelly remembered what that something was. He got out of his bed, and, holding the door open, listened. There was no sound audible at all except the ticking of a clock in the parlour below. Mr. Kelly drew on his clothes carefully, so as not to disarrange the bandages of his wound, and, taking his shoes in his hand, crept down the stairs. It was a slow, painful business, and more than once he had to sit down on the steps and rest. He glanced into the parlour as he passed, and saw, to his great relief, that it was only half past eight in the morning. What with fomentations and bandages Mr. Kelly had kept the tiny household out of bed to a late hour, and so no one was astir. He drew back the bolt and slipped out of the house.

Half an hour later, Dr. Townley came into the bedroom and found it empty. He scratched his head to ease his perplexity, and then wisely took counsel with his daughter.

'There was a man he expected to come for him,' he said. 'He was very urgent last night that I should see to it. But I cut him short, and so do not know where they were to meet with each other.'

At that moment the clock in the parlour struck nine.

'I know!' cried Rose on a sudden, and dragged her father off to the boulevard outside the Porte du Rhone, where they discovered Mr. Kelly sitting bolt upright on his bench, with a flushed red face and extraordinarily bright eyes, chattering to himself like a monkey.

The Parson lay for a week after that at death's door, and it needed all Dr. Townley's skill and Rose's nursing to keep him out of the grave. Meanwhile the Duke of Ormond's messenger arrived from Corunna, and kicked his heels on the boulevard until Mr. Kelly recovered his senses and summoned Mr. Philabe to his aid. Mr. Philabe the next morning took Kelly's place on the bench, and that day the money changed hands and the messenger started back post-haste to Corunna. At Corunna he told the story of the Parson's misfortune in more than one café, and so it came shortly to Wogan's ears, who put in with his ship at that port in order to give up his command.

The reason for this change in Wogan's condition was simple enough. Sufficient arms and ammunition had now been collected at Bilboa, and it was become urgent that the plans for the rising of the soldiers in England, and the capture of the Tower of London, should be taken earnestly in hand. The Duke of Ormond, who was to land in the West, was supposed a great favourite with the English troops, but it was none the less necessary that their favour should be properly directed. To that end Mr. Talbot, Tyrell, and Nicholas Wogan, amongst others, were deputed to travel into England, ready for the moment of striking. Nick was to have the rank of a colonel, and was bidden to repair to Paris by a certain date, where he was to take his instructions from General Dillon and the Earl of Mar. Now that date gave him half a week or so of leisure, and he knew of no better use to which he could put it than in stopping at Avignon, which lay directly in his path to Paris.

But before he reached the olives of Provence Mr. Kelly was convalescent and much had happened. How it had happened Mr. Wogan only discovered by hints which the Parson let slip unconsciously. For George had a complete distaste for the sensibilities, and, after all, a true man, even in the company of his closest friend, never does more than touch lightly upon the fringe of what he holds most sacred. He said that he was recovered of two fevers at one and the same time, and by the same ministering hands, and so was come forth into a sweet, cool life and a quiet air. His affairs, whether of stocks in the Mississippi scheme or of the Great Business, went clean out of his mind. His heart was swept and garnished like the man's in the Parable, and almost unawares a woman opened the door and stepped in, bringing with her train seven virtues, as of modesty, innocence, faith, cheerfulness, youth, courage, and love--qualities no better nor no fairer than herself.

How did it begin? Why, at the first there would be a smiling face at the doorway to wish him a good morning, or if he had slept ill a sweet look of anxious fear which would make up for a dozen sleepless nights. When he could get up from his bed and come into the parlour, the dog Harlequin, and Rose, and he became children and playfellows together, for the brute had been taught a hundred pretty tricks that would make a dying man laugh; until at length the girl grew familiar, and was seated at the very hearth and centre of his affections, where her memory remains enshrined.

Mr. Kelly spoke frankly of the matter only once in Mr. Wogan's hearing, and that was many years afterwards, and then he was not speaking of the matter at all. It was Lady Mary Wortley who set him on to it one night.

For she quoted a saying of some sage or another. 'In a man,' said she, 'desire begets love, and in a woman love begets desire.'

'And that is true,' said Kelly. 'I do think the steadfast and honourable passions between our sex and women are apt to have their beginnings on the woman's side, and then, being perceived and most gratefully welcomed, light up as pure a flame in the heart of a man. For otherwise, if a man sees a woman that she is fair, as King David saw Bathsheba, and so covets her, his appetite may in the end turn to love or may not. But if his eyes are first opened to an innocent woman's love, he being at best a sinful creature, he is then stirred with a wonderful amazement of grateful tenderness which never can pass away, but must endure, as I hold, even after death.' Which was all very modish and philosophical, and meant--well, just what anyone who had visited Avignon in February of the year '22 might have seen with half an eye. Rose was in love with the Parson and the Parson knew it, and so fell in love with Rose.

Mr. Wogan reached Avignon in the afternoon. The Doctor's house stood a stone's throw from the Palace of the Emperor Constantine, with a little garden at the back which ran down to the city wall. The top of the wall was laid out as a walk with a chair or two, and there Wogan found the Parson and Rose Townley. It was five years and more since Wogan had seen Rose Townley, and she was grown from a child to a woman. He paid her a foolish compliment, and then the three of them fell into an awkward silence. Mr. Wogan asked Kelly for a history of his wound, and then:

'So 'twas Scrope. Lady Mary was right when she warned me we had not seen the last of him. 'Faith, George, it was my fault. For, d'ye see, if I had not been so fond of my poetry I should have made my account with the gentleman at the gates of Brampton Bryan Manor, and you would never have been troubled with him at all.'

"Brampton Bryan?" asked Rose. "Where is that?"

Mr. Kelly made no answer, and perhaps Wogan's remark was not the discreetest in the world. Miss Rose would not forget that name, Brampton Bryan. At all events, the three of them fell to silence once more, and Mr. Wogan knew that he was trespassing and that he would have done better to have journeyed straight to Paris. Rose, however, came to the rescue and made him tell over again, as he had told her often before, his stories of the march to Preston. But, whereas before she had listened to them with a great enthusiasm and an eagerness for more, now her colour came and went as though they frightened her, and she would glance with a quick apprehension towards the Parson.

'And the battles are to be fought all over again,' she said, clasping her hands on her knees, and then plied Wogan for more details. She shivered at the thought of wounds and cannon-balls and swords, yet she must know to the very last word all that was to be described of them. So, until the sun sank behind the low green hills of the Cevennes, and the Rhone at their feet, in that land of olives, took on a pure olive tint. Then she rose and went into the house to prepare the supper, leaving the two friends together; and it presently appeared that Rose Townley was not the only one who was frightened.

The Parson watched her as she went down the garden, brushing the pink blossoms from the boughs of a peach tree or two that grew on the lawn. There was an old moss-grown stone sundial close to the house; she paused for a moment beside it to pick up a scarf which was laid on the top and so passed through the window, whence in a moment or two a lamp-light shone. The Parson seemed sunk in a reverie.

'I am afraid, Nick,' he said slowly. 'I am afraid.'

'What! You too?' exclaimed Wogan. 'Afraid of the wars?'

'The wars--no, no,' replied Kelly scornfully dismissing the interpretation of his fears, and then following out his own train of thoughts, 'you have known her a long time, Nick?'

'Six years.'

'I would that I too had known her six years ago,' said the Parson with a remorseful sigh.

'She has changed in those six years.'

'How?'

'Why, she has grown a foot, and grown a trifle shy.'

'Ah, but that's only since--' began the Parson with a nod, and came to a sudden stop. Rose's shyness was the outcome of her pride. She was shy just because she knew that she loved a man who had breathed no word of love to her. Mr. Kelly sat for a little longer in silence. Then,

'But I am afraid, Nick,' he repeated, and so went down into the house leaving Nick in some doubt as to what he was afraid of.

The Parson repeated his remark the next morning after breakfast. Mr. Wogan was smoking a pipe upon the wall; the Parson was walking restlessly about as he spoke.

'I am afraid,' said he, and looks towards the house. As soon as he looked, he started. So Wogan looked too. Rose Townley had just come from the window and was walking across the lawn more or less towards them with an infinite interest and attention for everything except the two figures on the city wall.

'She comes slowly,' said Kelly in a great trepidation, as though he had screwed up his courage till it snapped like a fiddle-string. 'She is lost in thought. No doubt she would not be disturbed,' and he glanced around him for means of escape. There was, however, only one flight of narrow steps from the wall down to the garden; and if he descended that he would be going to meet her.

Wogan laughed. 'She comes very slowly,' said he. 'No doubt she saw you from the window.'

'It is plain she did not,' replied the Parson, 'for, as you say, she comes very slowly.'

'The vanity of the creature!' cried Wogan. 'D'ye think if she saw you she would run at you and butt you in the chest with her head?'

'No,' says Kelly quickly. 'I do not. But--well, if she saw us here she would at the least look this way.'