Mr. Wogan leaned his elbows on the table, and bent across towards his friend.
'I am sorry because the last secret has been sold, and it was not Mar that sold it. Therefore somebody else sold it; therefore I am at the pain of being obliged to suspect a lady who probably knows her late lover's cypher.'
Mr. Kelly blanched.
'And how do you know that the last secret is sold?'
'As any man would know who had not lain abed all the day. George, the Park is full of soldiers. The Tower regiment that we thought Layer had bought is there with the rest under canvas. Ministers would not make an encampment in the Park because they knew that the Bishop had advised the King that nothing was to be done. Therefore Mar is not the only traitor.'
'And why should my Lady Oxford be the Judas?'
'Mainly to punish a certain nonjuring clergyman, for whose sake she is the burden of a ballad, and sung of in coffee-houses.'
'A ballad? Of what sort?'
'Of the sort that makes a good whipping-post for a fine lady. Ridicule is the whip, and, by the Lord, it is laid on unsparingly. Perhaps you would like to hear it,' and Mr. Wogan recited, in a whisper, so much of the poem as he judged proper. It closed thus:--
'Oh, happy to my rhymes,