Lady Helen smiled, and laid her hand gently upon Wilton's arm.
"There is a link between him and me, lady," she said, "which can never be broken; and I shall often, I hope, hear of your welfare from him, for I trust that you will see him not infrequently."
Lady Laura blushed slightly, but she was not one to suffer any fine or noble feeling of the heart to be checked by such a thing as false shame.
"I trust I shall," she answered, raising her eyes to Wilton's face—" I trust I shall see him often, very often; and I shall never see him, certainly, without feelings of pleasure and gratitude. You do not know that this is the second time he has delivered me from great danger."
The Duke of Berwick smiled, not, indeed, at Lady Laura's words, but at the blush that came deeper and deeper into her cheek as she spoke. He made no observation, however, but changed the conversation by addressing Wilton, "Wherever I am to procure a horse under your good guidance, my dear sir," he said, "I must, I believe, take another name than my own; for though Berwick and London are very distant places, yet there might be compulsory means found of bringing them unpleasantly together. You must call me, therefore, Captain Churchill, if you please;—a name," he added, with a sigh, "which, very likely, the gentleman who now fills the throne of England might be very well inclined to bestow upon me himself. Lady Helen, I wish you good night, and take my leave. Master Plessis, I leave the horse with you: he never was worth ten pounds, and now he's not worth five; so you may sell him to pay for my entertainment."
Bowing to the very ground from various feelings of respect, French, English, and Jacobite, Plessis took a candle and lighted the Duke down stairs, while Wilton followed, accompanied by Laura and Captain Byerly. The outer door was then opened, and the whole party issued forth into the field which surrounded the house, finding themselves suddenly in the utter darkness of a moonless, starless, somewhat foggy night.
From the little stone esplanade, which we have mentioned, lay a winding road up to the gate in the walls, and along that Wilton and his companion turned their steps, keeping silence as they went, with the listening ear bent eagerly to catch a sound. It was not, indeed, a sense of general apprehension only which made Wilton listen so attentively, for, in truth, he had fancied at the very moment when they were issuing forth from the house, that he had heard a low murmur as if of people talking at some distance.
The same sound had met the ears of the Duke of Berwick, and had produced the same effect; but nothing farther was heard till they reached the gate, and Wilton's hand was stretched out to open it; when suddenly a loud "Who goes there?" was pronounced on the opposite side of the gate, and half-a-dozen men, who had been lying in the inside of the wall, surrounded the party on all sides.
Several persons now spoke at once. "Who goes there?" cried one voice again; but at the same time another exclaimed, "Call up the Messenger, call up the Messenger from the other gate."
These last words gave Wilton some satisfaction, though they were by no means pleasant to the ears of the Duke of Berwick.