"Certainly; to do otherwise would be to contradict the tenor of my life."
"It may be something that your conscience cannot approve," she said.
"It is too late to think of that," he said, smiling; "I should have thought of that years ago, when I was a boy at Westacre, and this man came to me as an angel of light—to me a weak, ignorant, country lad—to me, who owe him everything that I am, everything that I know, everything—even the power that enables me to act for him."
Did she remember how he had once offered himself without reserve to her, then at least without any reservation in favour of this man? Did she regret that she had not encouraged this other attraction, or did she see that the same thing would have happened whether she had accepted him or no? She gave no indication of either of these thoughts.
"I think you owe something to another," she said, softly; "to One who knew you before this Jesuit; to One who was leading you onward before he came across your path; to One who gave you high and noble qualities, without which the Jesuit could have given you nothing; to One whom you have professed to love; to One for whose Divine Voice you have desired to listen. Johnny, will you listen no longer for it?"
He never forgot her, standing before him with her hands clasped and her eyes raised to his,—the flush of eager speaking on her face,—those great eyes, moistened again with tears, that pierced through him to his very soul,—her trembling lip,—the irresistible nobleness of her whole figure,—her winning manner, through which the love she had confessed for him spoke in every part. He never saw her again but once—then in how different a posture and scene; and the beauty of this sight never went out of his life, but it produced no effect upon his purpose; indeed how could it, when his purpose was not so much a part of him as he was a part of it? He looked at her in silence, and his love and admiration spoke out so unmistakably in his look that Mary never afterwards doubted that he had loved her. He had not power to explain his conduct; he could not have told himself why he acted as he did. Amid the distracting purposes which tore his heart in twain he could say nothing but,—
"It may not be so bad as you think."
Mary gave him her hand, turned from him, and went into the house; and he let her go—her of whom the sight must have been to him as that of an angel—he let her go without an effort to stay her, even to prolong the sight. His horses were waiting, and one of his servants would follow with his mails; he mounted and rode away. The sun had set in a cloud, and the autumn evening was dark and gloomy, yet he rode along without any appearance of depression, steadily and quietly, like a man going about some business he has long expected to perform. I cannot even say he was sad: that moment had come to him which from his boyhood he had looked forward to. Now at last he could prove, at any rate to himself, that he was equal to that effort which it had been his ideal to attempt.
When Inglesant reached Oxford he sought out the Jesuit and found him alone. The royal affairs were at the lowest ebb. Since the battle of Naseby the King had done little but wander about like a fugitive. He was now at Oxford; but it was doubtful whether he could stay there in safety through the winter, and certainly he would not be able to do so after the campaign began, unless some change in his fortunes meanwhile occurred. All this Inglesant knew only too well. The ruin of the royal cause, entailing his own ruin and that of all his friends, was too palpable to need description. The Jesuit therefore at once proceeded to the means which were prepared to remedy this disastrous state of things. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormond, had, with the consent of the King, concluded a truce with the Irish, who, after long years of oppression, spoliation and misery, had, a few years before, broken out suddenly in rebellion, and massacred hundreds of the unprepared Protestants, men, women, and children, under circumstances, as is admitted by Catholics, and is perhaps scarcely to be wondered at, of frightful cruelty. A feeling of intense hatred and dread of these rebels had consequently filled the minds of the English Protestants, both Royalists and Parliamentarians; a feeling in which horror at murderous savages—for as such they not unnaturally regarded the Irish—was united with the old hatred and fear of popish massacres and cruelties. The Parliament had remonstrated with the King for his supineness in not concluding the war by the extirpation of these monsters, and when at last a truce was concluded with them, the anger of the Parliament knew no bounds, and even loyal Churchmen, although they acknowledged the hard necessity which obliged the King to such a step, yet lamented it as one of the severest misfortunes which had befallen them. The King hoped by this peace not only to be able to recall the soldiers who had been engaged against the rebels to his own assistance, but also to procure a detachment of Irish soldiers for the same purpose from the popish leaders. But the popish demands being very excessive, Ormond had not been able to advance far towards a settled peace, when, in the previous spring, the Lord Herbert (afterwards Earl of Glamorgan), the son of the Marquis of Worcester, of a devoted Catholic family and of great influence, announced his intention of going to Ireland on private business, and offered to assist the King with his influence among the Catholics. He had married a daughter of the great Irish house of Thomond, and undoubtedly possessed more influence in that island among the Papists than any other of the royal party.
The King eagerly accepted his assistance, and Glamorgan afterwards produced a commission, undeniably signed by the King, in which he gives him ample powers to treat with the Papists, and to grant them any terms whatever which he should find necessary, consistent with the royal supremacy and the safety of the Protestants. In this extraordinary commission he creates him Earl of Glamorgan, bestows on him the Garter and George, promises him the Princess Elizabeth as a wife for his son, gives him blank patents of nobility to fill up at his pleasure, and promises him on the word of a King to endorse all his actions. The only limit which appears to have been set to the Earl was an obligation to inform the Lord Lieutenant of all his proceedings; and the only doubt respecting this commission appears to be whether it was filled up before the King signed it, or written on a blank signed by the King, in accordance with conclusions previously agreed upon between him and the Earl.