"I cannot absolutely say that, my lord," replied Wilton; "but I certainly saw a gentleman whom I believed, and most firmly do still believe, to be him: he was a tall, thin, sinister-looking man, of a somewhat saturnine complexion, with a deep scar on his cheek."
"The same, the same," said the Earl, "undoubtedly the same. Listen,
if you know any of these names;" and he read from a list—"Sir
William Parkyns, Captain Rookwood, Captain Lowick, Sir John Friend,
Charnock, Cranburne, the Earl of Aylesbury—"
"The Earl certainly was not there, my lord," replied Wilton; "for I know him well by sight, and I saw no one, I can assure you, whom I knew, but Sir John Fenwick."
"And this Plessis, at whose house you saw them," continued the Earl—"did he seem to be taking a share in the business with them? He is an old friend of mine, this Master Plessis; and obtains for me some of the best information that I ever get from abroad. I do not know what I should do without Plessis. He is the most useful man in the world. We must let him off, at all events; but it will be no bad thing to have a rope round his neck, either."
"I cannot say, my lord," replied Wilton, "that he took any part whatsoever in the business. In the matter of setting free Lady Laura, he showed himself more afraid of these good gentry than fond of them, and after their arrival, he ran away and hid himself."
"And yet," said the Earl, "he's a rank Jacobite, too. But that does not signify. He's an excellent creature, and the greatest rogue in Christendom. All this chocolate comes from him; there's nothing like it in Europe. Won't you take some, Wilton? I forgot to ask if you had broken your fast."—Wilton replied that he had not, and the Earl made him sit down and follow his example, of writing letters and taking his chocolate at the same time. One of the notes, however, which the Earl himself wrote, attracted his secretary's attention in some degree; for as soon as Lord Byerdale had concluded it, he rang the bell and gave it to a servant, saying, "Take that to Captain Churchill's lodgings. You know where he lives, just in Duke Street. Wait for an answer."
The man went away, and business proceeded. At the end of about an hour, however, the servant returned, saying, as an excuse for his long absence, that Captain Churchill was in bed when he reached his house, and that his valet had refused to wake him.
"When he did wake, however, my lord," added the man, "he said he would not detain me to write a note, as I had been kept so long already; but would wait upon your lordship at the hour you named."
Shortly after the return of the servant, the Earl took up his papers, and prepared to proceed to Whitehall. Before he went, however, he paused opposite to the table at which Wilton was writing, and looking at him for a moment with a smile, he said,—
"You are surprised, Wilton, and have been puzzling yourself with the reason why I take so much more interest in you than I used to do. I will explain it all to you, Wilton, in one word. I did not at first know who you were. I now do, as I have before hinted; and my conduct to one whom I believed to be a natural son of the Earl of Sunbury, and who was forced upon me somewhat against my own will, was of course very different from that which I show towards a young gentleman of a high and noble family, not very distantly related to myself.—Now are you satisfied?"