'"Oliver, how can you be so cruel?" she burst out impetuously. "He shall not be kept in this suspense. My Lord Desmond, you are saved. The King has granted you a pardon, and you are free to leave the Tower whenever it pleases you."
'A tumult of mixed feelings came rushing over me when I looked into her sweet, eager face. She had left her brother's arm, and stood before me with a beautiful crimson flush on her cheeks, and her dark eyes glistening with tears, as they had done on that morning of our last, meeting in the Palace.
'"Saved! and on Sir Bernard's conditions?" I stammered out, hardly knowing what I said, while a cold pang of doubt and fear shot across me. But I did not need Oliver's emphatic "No, no; Sir Bernard has naught to do with it. 'Tis Fan who has managed all;" for Frances' reproachful eyes had answered my question, and before her brother had done speaking, her hands were clasped in mine, and the promise so lightly spoken in those childish days at Horsemandown was solemnly repeated now. Frances and I were husband and wife, until death us should part.
* * * * * * * * * *
'A few weeks after, my wife and I were sailing out of the mouth of the Thames, on board a vessel bound for Altona, and Frances, for the first time in her life looked out upon the sea. It was with very wistful eyes that she watched the shores of England growing fainter and fainter to her sight, for she had never left them before; and now she was an exile's wife, and might possibly wander over half the countries of Europe before she saw her native land again. The pardon which she had striven so hard to obtain had not been granted without the proviso that her husband should leave the country at once, and for ever; and without hesitation she had agreed to leave her own home and kindred and to share the future—which to her had once looked so brilliant—with a man whose prospects were already sufficiently blighted, but which without her would be hopelessly dreary indeed.
'Sir Bernard was very loth to let her go; but as the marriage could only have been annulled by our mutual consent, he had no choice but to be reconciled to it. He and I parted good friends; and he showed far more affection for his daughter, and sorrow at bidding her farewell, than I had ever believed him capable of feeling. But perhaps the hardest matter to both of us was the saying good-bye to Oliver, who, on his unexpected return from Holland high in the King's favour, had done a great deal towards overcoming his father's dislike to our marriage. Very many years passed by before we saw his face again.
'It was not until late in Queen Anne's reign that the sentence of my banishment was reversed, and my forfeited estates restored.
'Need I say that the first days of our return to England were spent with Sir Oliver Dalrymple, now the master of Horsemandown, where Frances and I smiled over the remembrance of our first meeting, and knelt together once more in the little parish church which had been the scene of our wedding so very long ago?'
PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH