'"It is not safe," he replied carelessly. "I am entirely in your power. If you choose to betray me, or if your friend does not keep our counsel very rigorously, I should be committed to the Tower without fail, and most likely share the fate of many a one before me. But I am not afraid. I know enough of Oliver to feel sure that his sister could not be treacherous, even had I no claim on her but that of her brother's friendship."
'"Surely not," I said eagerly. "But oh! there must be many other chances of discovery. What could make you run such a fearful risk?"
'"You would not think so much of the risk if you had been in peril of your life as often as I have," said Lord Desmond, with a smile which recalled to me my bridegroom of eleven years ago. "I have been employed in so many hazardous intrigues, and have had so many hair-breadth escapes, that for the life of me I cannot feel as alarmed about my fate as I used to be. As to my reason for coming, you shall hear that presently, when you have read your brother's letter, which will show you that I had his authority at least for obtaining an interview with you, and as much help as he could give me in contriving it."
'I broke the seal and tried to read, but my mind refused to take in the sense of the words. I could think of nothing but the wonderful discovery I had made; and after gazing absently at the paper for about a minute, I put it down to say, "How did you meet Oliver? I thought you were in France. I don't seem to understand anything yet."
'"It was," replied Lord Desmond, "at a chocolate house at the Hague that I saw him first. He had been sent to the Government there with despatches from the generals in Flanders. I—well!—I had private business there connected with the affairs of His Majesty at St. Germains. I heard your brother's name mentioned accidentally, sought him out at his lodgings, and made myself known. I could not resist the temptation of finding out how I stood with you all, though, as a Jacobite and an exile, I know I had no right to expect any countenance from an officer in King William's army. Oliver was most generous and kind, greeted me as warmly as if we had been brothers indeed, and declared that he had long been hoping that chance would bring us together again. That meeting altered all my plans for the future. Before that I had been frittering away my time at St. Germains, seeing plot after plot for bringing the King back to his rights fail; and at last, when I found assassination and treachery were to be the means employed for his restoration, almost resolving to renounce politics altogether, enter some foreign service where I should not be obliged to fight against England, and so push my way up to distinction. The King's cause seemed to me hopeless after the affair of La Hogue. I could do him no good by living on at his Court as a pensioner on his bounty, and I was wearied to death with the splendour, the bustle, the squabbles and jealousies of Versailles and St. Germains. It was just when I had made up my mind to this that I received a letter from Sir Bernard Dalrymple. You know the proposal it contained?"
'"I knew he purposed writing to you, but I did not know he had actually done so," I said in surprise.
'"Indeed! then your brother was right after all. I was convinced, from what Sir Bernard said, that you, as well as he, wished to break off all connection between us. I did not wonder, for I saw that it was hard for you to be bound for life to a man without fortune, friends, or position; and I should certainly have taken your father at his word, and have allowed him to try all the means in his power to break off our marriage and leave you free, had it not been for the sight of Oliver's face in that Dutch coffee-house. It reminded me, somehow, of your mother, and of your home at Horsemandown, where everything looked bright and cheerful, and you all so much happier than I had ever been. I really believe it was his likeness to her which made me suddenly resolve to find out where he lived, and try if he would remember our old friendship."
'Here Lord Desmond paused a moment, but, as I did not speak, he went on. "You cannot imagine," he said, "what Oliver's kindness was to me. I had been so long alone in the world, that to be treated as if belonging to his family, to be told of all that had befallen them since last we met, as if he was sure of my sympathy and interest, was wonderfully strange and pleasant to me. And then he talked of you so fondly and proudly; he was so certain that you knew nothing of Sir Bernard's ambitious schemes in connection with your marriage (rumours of which had reached the gossiping little Court of St. Germains); he was so indignant at your father's letter;—that I began to have a faint, wild hope that you might think like him; that, perhaps, if—— In short, I determined, at all hazard, to see you once more, to hear your own wishes from your own lips, and not to give your father an answer, one way or another, until I should know them."
'My wishes! What were they? Half an hour before I should have declared unhesitatingly for freedom; not for the sake of making a grand marriage, but that I might continue my present careless, butterfly life, looking forward no further than to the days when Oliver should have returned from the wars, when we should all be together again, and pay a happy visit to Horsemandown. But now, when my eyes were full of tears at hearing Oliver spoken of by one who seemed to care for him almost as much as I did—when Lord Desmond's allusion to my mother had brought back to me the remembrance of the words she had used when she first told me I was to be married: "Remember, Frances, you are about to make a vow you will one day be called on to fulfil"—now everything was changed. What could I feel but pity for him, and self-reproach for my own hard-hearted conduct in refusing all help to Oliver, when he had tried his utmost to influence my father in Algernon's favour? But I would make up for that now. I would use all the power I possessed to persuade my father to intercede with the King; and if that failed, I would petition the Queen myself for a reversal of the sentence of banishment. I would do anything and everything to show my brother's friend that I was not the ambitious, calculating woman of the world he had pictured to himself. I would justify Oliver's trust in me, and then——
'"I am very sorry, Frances—I must come in," said the voice of Beatrice at the door, before I had time to say one word aloud in answer to Lord Desmond's appeal. "I have knocked three times, and have had no answer. The Queen commands your attendance in her cabinet immediately. She asked where you were; and when I replied with my little fiction about the haberdasher and the new stuffs, Lady Derby was seized with a desire to come and see them; so I ran on before to warn Mr. Carroll to make good his escape by the back-stairs before she arrives, unless he has bethought him of bringing some brocades and satins with him to bear out his supposed character."