“There will be no peace till we are off,” observed the lady to her maid. In answer to which Bessie only sighed deeply.
“I want you to attend me downstairs,” observed the lady. “But this provoking nonsense of yours, this crying about going a journey, has made you not fit to be seen. If any friend of my lord’s saw your red eyes, he would go and say that my own maid was on my lord’s side. I must go down alone.”
“Pray, madam, let me attend you. The gentleman will not think of looking at me: and I will stand with my back to the light, and the room is dark.”
“No; your very voice is full of tears. Stay where you are.”
Lady Carse sailed into the room very grandly, not knowing whom she was to see. Nor was she any wiser when she did see him. He was muffled up, and wore a shawl tied over his mouth, and kept his hat on; so that little space was left between hat, periwig, and comforter. He apologised for wearing his hat, and for keeping the lady standing—his business was short:—in the first place to show her Lord Carse’s ring, which she would immediately recognise.
She glanced at the ring, and knew it at once.
“On the warrant of this ring,” continued the gentleman, “I come from your husband to require from you what you cannot refuse,—either as a wife, or consistent with your safety. You hold a document,—a letter from your husband, written to you in conjugal confidence five years ago, from London,—a letter—”
“You need not describe it further,” said the lady. “It is my chief treasure, and not likely to escape my recollection. It is a letter from Lord Carse, containing treasonable expressions relating to the royal family.”
“About the treason we might differ, madam; but my business is, not to argue that, but to require of you to deliver up that paper to me, on this warrant,” again producing the ring.
The lady laughed, and asked whether the gentleman was a fool or took her to be one, that he asked her to give up what she had just told him was the greatest treasure she had in the world,—her sure means of revenge upon her enemies.