Knowing that I could not convince her at that time, I bore away from the topic and called her attention to the impropriety of taking dinner unescorted at a public house.
"I know all about it, cousin," she returned, "but a good character is of no value in Whitehall. It is an incumbrance. As to my conscience, you need have no fear. When I first came to court, I supposed I should encounter dangers. I was mistaken. I am as safe here as I should be in my father's house. All the pitfalls and snares are to be seen by any one who wishes to see them. It is the sleeping spider that catches the fly, not your bold, brazen hunter, clumsily alert."
I did not want to be preaching constantly to Frances, so we talked on other subjects till we reached my uncle's house, where I remained, singing, dancing, and very merry with Frances, Sarah, and Churchill, till we heard the night watch call, "One o'clock and raining!"
Churchill and I slept at Sir Richard's and returned to Whitehall the next morning.
During the following week I went to see Betty frequently under the pretence of wishing to see Hamilton, but she told me (honestly, I believed) that he had left the Old Swan and that she did not know where he was. So I repeated my visits every day, each visit growing longer and I growing fonder. Betty, too, seemed to be looking for my visits with a degree of pleasure that both pleased and grieved me, for with all my longing for the girl, I never lost sight of the fact that if I were the right sort of man, I should not wish to gain her love to an extent that would mean sorrow to her.
If I were the right sort of man? The question has always set me wondering. The man who never doubts that he is the right sort of man may be put down as all bad, though the right sort of man is not necessarily all good.
CHAPTER VII
THE EYE OF THE DRAGON
One morning, a week or more after my visit to my uncle's house, with Frances, she came to my closet in the Wardrobe greatly excited, and told me that a sheriff had come to take her to one of the London courts of law.
"Here is the paper he gave me," she said, handing me a document which proved to be a subpoena. "I have committed no crime, and I can't imagine what it all means."