"I do not believe it," protested Tyrconnel. "I know you are all that is good."
"Thank you, my lord," returned Frances. "If I am good, I remain so for my own sake. As for the gossips, they may think what they please, talk about me to their hearts' content, and go to the devil for his content, if he can find it in them."
Seeing that Tyrconnel wanted to speak with Frances alone, I drew to a little distance for the purpose of giving him an opportunity to press his suit, in which I so heartily wished him success.
It is uphill work making love to a woman whose heart is filled to overflowing with love of another man, and I was sorry for poor earnest Tyrconnel as I watched him pleading his case with Frances. He was not a burning light intellectually, but he entertained a just estimate of himself and was wise enough not to take any one of the daintily baited hooks that were dangled before him by some of the fairest anglers in England. But manlike, he yearned for the hook that was not in the water.
I followed Frances and Tyrconnel back to the palace, and when they parted at the King's Street Gate, he asked me to go with him to the sign of the King's Head and have a tankard of mulled sack and a breast of Welsh mutton right off the spit.
Tyrconnel's speech was made up of an amusing lisp grafted on the broadest Irish brogue ever heard outside of Killarney. It cannot be reproduced in print; therefore I shall not attempt it. But it was so comical that one could never rid one's self of a desire to laugh, be his Lordship ever so earnest. As a result of this amusing manner of speech, his most serious words never produced a thoughtful impression on his hearers. It is said that the king once laughed when Tyrconnel, in tears, told him of the death of his Lordship's mother.
Arriving at the King's Head, Tyrconnel chose a table in a remote alcove of the dining room. After the maid had brought us the mulled sack and had gone to fetch the mutton, his Lordship began earnestly, but laughably, to tell me his troubles, and I did my best to listen seriously, though with poor result.
"I want to marry your cousin, baron," he said. "Yes, yes, go on. Laugh! I don't mind it. I know you can't help it. But listen. I want to marry her because she is beautiful and because I know she is good. But if she is in love with Hamilton, as report says she is, I should not want to inflict my suit upon her. I know that at best I am no genius, but I am not so great a fool as to seek an opportunity to make myself appear more stupid than I am. Of course she can never marry Hamilton, but a hopeless love clings to a woman as burning oil to the skin and is well-nigh as impossible to extinguish. Therefore I beg you tell me. Shall I beat a retreat and take care of my wounded, or shall I continue the battle?"
"I should not trouble myself about the wounded," I answered, reluctant to evade the truth, for he was an honest soul, very much in earnest.
"But do you speak honestly?" he asked, mopping the perspiration from his face with the tablecloth. "She laughs when I speak seriously, but I have hoped that it was because of my damnable manner of speech rather than my suit. Tell me, what do you think about it? Is she in love with Hamilton?"