'But I locked the note up.'
'With the rest of the lady's letters in my dispatch box?'
''Faith, Nick, you are the devil. How did you know that?'
'Oh, I have divined your amorous use of my box.'
'But you are wrong. I had the box with the dangerous papers of the plot open on the table when I was reading the letter. Mrs. Kilburne knocked at the door. I did not know who it might be. I slipped the letter in on the top of the papers of the Plot, and locked the box before I opened the door.'
'There it remains then? Well, her Ladyship's note is in the better company. But what did she say? Did she give a reason for your meeting?'
'The chief thing, after the usual compliments, was that she had most important news, that might not be written, to give me about Mr. Farmer's affairs. Probably she may have had an inkling of the discovery and wished to warn me.'
'We must see her,' said Wogan, whose curiosity was on edge from the first about this party of pleasure.
'But my papers--I must burn my papers.'
'George, you are set, or you are not set. If you had been set the messengers would have been at your lodgings before I went thither; in fact, before you were out of bed. Therefore, either you have the whole night safe or, going home now, you go into a mousetrap, as the French say, and your papers are the cheese to lure you there. Now, they cannot know of my lady's invitations, and if they by any accident did know, a Minister would hardly take a man at a lady's house. That were an ill use for the hostess.'