George was driven to this flagrant incorrectness because, though Miss Townley had not yet seen the Queen's portrait (her father having changed sides) she might see one any day, and find Mr. Kelly out.
The girl was satisfied, and the thing went by, for the time. But, on later occasions, his conscience gnawing him, the good George very unwisely dropped out general hints of the unworthiness of his sex, and of himself in particular, as many an honest fellow has done. In Mr. Wogan's opinion, bygones ought to be bygones, but it takes two to that bargain. Meanwhile Miss Rose might make as much or as little of her lover's penitences as she chose, and, indeed, being a lass of gold, with a sense of honour not universal in her sex, and perfectly sure of him, she made nothing whatever, nor thought at all of the matter.
But there was another dragon in the course that never yet ran smooth. The excellent surgeon, who had not recovered the fright of Preston, was obdurate. He had no dislike for Mr. Kelly, but a very great distaste for Mr. Kelly's Cause. Rose might coax, the Parson might argue, Wogan might use all his blandishments--the good man was iron. In brief, Kelly must cease to serve the King, or cease to hope for Rose. This was a hard choice, for indeed Mr. Kelly could not in honour leave hold of the threads of the plot which were then in his hands.
So much Dr. Townley was at last brought to acknowledge, and thereupon a compromise was come to. Mr. Kelly was to go over to England once again, on the last chance. The blow was to be struck in this spring of the year 1722. If it failed, or could not be struck, Mr. Kelly was to withdraw from the King's affairs and earn his living by writing for the booksellers, and instructing youth.
The Parson was the more ready to agree to this delay, because of a circumstance with which he was now acquainted. The Doctor and his daughter were themselves on the point of returning to England. Mr. Kelly and Rose had no great difficulty in persuading the surgeon that he would find it more convenient to live in London than in the country, of the miseries of which they drew a very pathetic and convincing picture; and so, being assured that the delay would not mean a complete separation, they accepted the plan and fell to mapping out their lives.
They chose the sort of house they would live in and where, whether in Paris or in England: they furnished it from roof to cellar.
'There must be a room for Nick,' said the Parson, 'so that he can come in and out as if to his own house.'
Mr. Wogan had borne his part in persuading Dr. Townley, without a thought of the great change which the Parson's marriage meant for him. But these words, and the girl's assent, and above all a certain unconscious patronage in their voices, struck the truth into him with something of a shock.
Mr. Wogan escaped from the room, and walked about in the garden. These two men, you are to understand, had been boys together, George being by some years the older, and had quarrelled and fought and made friends again twenty times in a day. Mr. Kelly bore, and would bear till his dying day, a little scar on his cheek close to his ear, where he was hit by a mallet which Wogan heaved at him one day that he was vexed. Wogan never noticed that scar but a certain pleasurable tenderness came over him. His friendship with the Parson had been, as it were, the heart of his boyhood. And in after years it had waxed rather than diminished. The pair of them could sit one on each side of a fire in perfect silence for an hour together, and yet converse intelligibly to each other all the while. Well, here was Mr. Wogan alone in the darkness of the little garden at Avignon now. The Rhone looked very cold beneath the stars, and the fields entirely desolate and cheerless. Yet he gazed that way persistently, for if he turned his head toward the house he saw a bright window across which the curtains were not drawn, and a girl's fair hair shining gold against a man's black periwig. Mr. Wogan had enough sense to strangle his jealousy that night, and was heartily ashamed of it the next morning when he bade the couple good-bye and set out for Paris.
Mr. Kelly took his leave a few days later, being now sufficiently recovered to travel. The precise date was the eighth of April. To part from Rose you may well believe was a totally different matter from his adieus to Smilinda. Nothing would serve the poor girl, who had no miniature and diamonds to give, but to sacrifice what she prized most in the world after her father and her lover.