The first of the personages we have mentioned approached with a slow step towards the fire, saying to Plessis as he advanced, "So the Colonel has not come, I see?"
"No, Sir George," replied Plessis with a lowly inclination of the head, "he has not arrived yet; but I had a messenger from him at noon to-day, saying that he would be here to-night."
"Ha!" exclaimed Sir George Barkley, "that is more than I expected—But he will not come, he will not come! Make us a bowl of punch, good Plessis—make us a bowl of punch—the night is very cold.—But he will not come, I feel very sure he will not come."
"I think I hear his horse's feet even now," replied Plessis—"at all events, there is some one arrived."
"Keep him some minutes down below, good Plessis," exclaimed Sir George Barkley hastily. "Run down and meet him. Make up some story, and delay him as long as possible; for I have got something to consult with these gentlemen upon before we see him."
Plessis hastened away; and as soon as the door was closed, Barkley turned to the gaily dressed man we have mentioned, saying, "Charnock, tell Sir John Friend and Captain Rookwood what we were saying as we came along; and all that has happened in London."
The dull countenance of Charnock was lighted up in a moment by one of those quick looks we have mentioned. "Listen, Parkyns, too," he said, "for you have not heard the whole."
"Be quick, be quick, Charnock," said Sir George Barkley.
"Well, thus it is then, gentlemen," said Charnock—"matters do not go so favourably as we could have wished. Sir John Fenwick, here, the most active of us all, had got the Duke of Gaveston to join us heartily, to concur in the rising, or, at all events, to hear all that we propose, with a promise of perfect secrecy; but most unfortunately, at the meeting at the Old King's Head, some one unwisely suffered it to slip out that we were to have thirty thousand French troops, forgetting that what is good to tell the lower classes and those who are timid and fearful of not having means enough, does not do to be told to the bold and high-minded, who are apt to be foolishly confident. The Duke cried out at that, and vowed that if his opinion were to have any weight, or if his co-operation was of any import, not a foreign soldier should come into the land. This was bad enough; but we might have smoothed that down, had not Lowick chanced to hint the plan for getting rid of this Prince of Orange as the first step. Thereupon both the Duke and the Earl of Aylesbury, who were present, flew out like fire; and the Duke, vowing he would hear no more, took up his hat and sword and walked away, in spite of all that could be said. The Earl, for his part, stayed the business out, saying, that he would have nothing to do with the affair, but that he remained to show us that he would not betray anything."
"That is to say," exclaimed one of the others, "that the Duke will betray all."