The night upon which the king had been promised that the young Ellen, with whom he was so deeply enamoured, would come to his apartments, at length arrived, and set in with squally fierceness.
For the whole day the sun had been obscured by clouds, and although it was not until evening actually arrived that any rain had fallen, yet it had threatened to do so numberless times, and the scud of heavy clouds had been coursing through the air at a terrible rate.
The wind, though, about sunset—when a dashing rain began to fall—had sensibly moderated, and it was only now and then that it whistled about the old towers and chimneys of St. James’s Palace.
The two dissolute and unscrupulous men to whom the king had, rather in defiance of the pledge he gave to Sir Richard Warbeck, given an account of his intended adventure—namely, Blood and the page Simon—were quite ready to play their part in the comedy, which they knew was about to take place.
The ruin of a young girl, who confided in the truth and honesty of one, who, under a false name, affected to love her, was to them a common-place affair.
And without a thought or regret for the evil they were about to do, they joined heart and hand in the infamous plan for the destruction of the fair Ellen.
If we were to say that the king had no terrors upon the subject, we should, perhaps, be, at his age, giving him the discredit of a greater familiarity with vice than he really had.
The career of dissipation which he had fallen into was in consequence of evil councillors surrounding him; and it is certain that, during the day, he had several misgivings with regard to the course he agreed to pursue in this affair.
By appointment, Colonel Blood met the king in his own apartments about one hour before the time appointed for the meeting with young Ellen.
And whatever might have been his own qualms of conscience, they were soon smothered by the reckless manner in which those two dissolute persons, Blood and Simon, spoke of the affair.