'My hand was on my sword in an instant, but I had not time to draw it. Several more figures had already rushed through the gateway. My arms were held down, my sword unfastened, and I was dragged out of Bushy Park a prisoner.
'I need not say how bitter and desponding were the thoughts that filled my mind that night during our dark voyage up the Thames, on our way to the Tower. In a few hours I was about to pass through the Traitor's Gate; and I knew well, when I considered my case soberly, how very slender was my chance of leaving the Tower again, except for the scaffold. There was only one person in England who might perhaps speak a word in my behalf; and even if for her brother's sake she should take the trouble to speak it, was it likely that her petition would be of any use? Would not her father throw all his power into the opposite scale? Besides, I felt that my offences against King William were far too great and too notorious to be forgiven. My fate was sealed, and through my own desperate rashness.
'There was an end now of the meeting in Queen Mary's Bower, which I had forced Frances, half against her will, to promise me. I wondered when she would hear of my arrest. For one moment the doubt crossed my mind whether she might not already know it—whether it could indeed be possible that she had betrayed the secret of my visit to the Queen. But no, I knew that it could not be so. Was she not Oliver's sister? Had she not Oliver's truthful eyes, and frank, honest smile? Far more likely that my pretty little acquaintance of St. James's Fair, the lively, sparkling Lady Beatrice, had been babbling to some of her companions of the matter—perhaps to the Queen herself. Or, after all, might not the discovery have been made most easily through the page who had admitted me into the Palace? or that old Lady Derby, who so very nearly caught me in Frances' room? Her suspicions might have been roused, and then doubtless she would soon manage to come to the bottom of the whole story. But Frances had not betrayed me; or, if she had, it was involuntarily, not through treachery. I could have staked my life upon that. No; I had no right to blame any one but myself. I had been madly reckless, and I must abide by the consequences.
'Ten days had gone by, and I knew what the price of that morning's recklessness was to be.
'My trial was over, and my dark foreboding was coming to pass. Three more days I was to spend in the Tower, and then I was to die upon the scaffold. Not a word had I heard of Frances since the night that I was taken prisoner; but her father had been in court on the day of my trial, and the same night I had received a letter from him, in which he offered to use all his interest with the Government to gain my pardon, but upon one condition. I must give him my promise to agree that my marriage with his daughter should be dissolved. We were now both of age, and at liberty to break it off by mutual consent. His reasons for wishing this, he said, were of course clear enough to me; and he doubted not that I should agree without hesitation to take a course which was plainly the best for his daughter's interests, and the only one which gave me a hope of escape. But Sir Bernard said nothing of his daughter's wishes on the subject. If Frances really was as anxious as himself to dissolve the marriage, surely he would have laid as much stress as possible upon that argument. Perhaps he meant her to have no voice in the matter; or did he take it for granted that her wishes were the same as her father's? I rather wondered that Sir Bernard should have chosen to interfere at all with my fortunes. I was sentenced to death, and if I died, his daughter, whether she was my wife or not, would of course be free.
'When the sentence was pronounced, I had not felt for a moment the slightest expectation that a pardon was to be procured on any terms, and had made up my mind to meet my fate as became a soldier. Still, it seemed very hard to die so early—harder now, I fancied, than it would have been a month ago. Yet if my only hope of life was to give up all claim to be Frances Dalrymple's husband!—— No; I could not bear to think of being released from my engagement merely to save my own head from the scaffold. Honour and pride alike forbade that. So I wrote in answer to Sir Bernard's proposal, that if my wife could truthfully say that it was her own unbiassed wish that the marriage should be broken off, I was ready to give my consent; but upon that condition alone. I did not allude to the hopes he had held out of using his interest with the Government on my behalf, nor did I say anything of Oliver's friendship with me; for somehow I shrank from the least approach to what I considered the ignominy of pleading for my life. But when the letter was despatched, and day after day passed on without a word of news having reached my ears concerning my wife or any of her family, I must own that I felt intensely sick at heart. I had been in peril of death over and over again, but never before had it seemed so close and so real as now. Pain and death are not so fearful when one only looks forward to them vaguely, as possible at any time. It is knowing the exact moment—feeling that it will inevitably come, and cannot be put off by any human power whatever—this is the ordeal which is hard to pass through with unfaltering courage.
'I stood at the window of my prison, gazing out on the river below. Escape was utterly out of the question. My exploit two years ago, when I triumphantly bore off my friend Will Delamere from the Tower, was too well remembered to leave the remotest chance for me of repeating that feat on my own account! Besides, I had no fellow-conspirator outside the walls. Will could never have done it alone. Oh, if Oliver did but know of my danger! Not that he could really have done anything to help me, but I should at least have had one friend to stand by me during these last few days of my life. But Oliver would hear nothing of my fate till all was over. This trouble must be gone through unflinchingly, without one soul who cared about me to say a word of sympathy or comfort. I was still gazing abstractedly at the river, absorbed in these melancholy thoughts, when footsteps outside the door and the well-known jangle of keys aroused me. I looked round, rather expecting to see the chaplain, who had promised to pay me a visit in the course of the day. It was not the chaplain, however, who stood before me, when, after sundry clicking of locks and grating of bolts, the heavy door was pushed open at last. The two figures upon whom I gazed, with dazzled, astonished eyes, were those of Oliver and Frances Dalrymple. For a moment I stood overwhelmed and speechless with surprise, and Frances also was silent. Her face was half concealed by her hood, and her hand was trembling on her brother's arm.
'"Algernon," cried Oliver, grasping my hand eagerly, "who would have thought of our next meeting being here?"
'"Who indeed?" I gasped out, still in a trance of bewilderment. "In sooth, Oliver, I little thought of our ever meeting again at all; but——" I paused and glanced at the graceful little figure clinging to his side.
'"Come, Fan, speak to him. Tell him the good news yourself," urged Oliver, looking down at her with a half smile, and trying to draw her nearer to me. "Nay, child, he shall not hear a word from me. You have the best right to tell it; and he will welcome it more from his wife's lips than——"