“Ask the lady, Sire,” pleaded Hart, in desperation. “I’ll stake my life upon her reply.”
“Nell?–Nell?” questioned the King; for he could scarce refuse to accept her word when a player had placed unquestioned faith in it.
Nell hid her face in her silken kerchief and burst into seeming spasmodic sobs of grief. “Sire!” was all the response the King could hear. He trembled violently and his face grew white. He did not know that Nell’s tears were merry laughs.
“Her tears convict her,” exclaimed Hart, triumphantly.
“I’ll not believe it,” cried the King.
Nell became more hysterical. She sobbed and sobbed, as though her heart would break, her face buried in her hands and her flying curls falling over and hiding all.
“Adair’s sides are aching,” she chuckled, in apparent convulsions of sorrow. “He’s laughing through Nell’s tears.”
Meanwhile, Moll had been standing by the window; and, though she was watching eagerly the exciting scene within the room, she could not fail to note the sound of galloping horses and the rattling of a heavy coach on the roadway without.
“A coach and six at break-neck speed,” she cried, “have landed at the door. A cavalier alights.”
“Time some one arrived,” thought Nell, as she glanced at herself in the mirror, to see that Adair was well hidden, and to arrange her curls, to bewitch the new arrivals, whosoever they might be.