The tears were not without balm, that filled the eyes of his nephew at the recollection.
In the midst of these meditations, the dungeon door opened, and Santa Cruz himself appeared on the threshold. Louis started from his seat, and could have cried aloud:—"Then my God has remembered me!"
But tidings from his father were also in his thoughts, and he only ejaculated that revered name.
Santa Cruz embraced him, with more agitation than his stately mien might have announced.
"The Duke de Ripperda has not been heard of;" returned he, "he must therefore be safe. By any other means than that of flight, I would his son were equally secure from his enemies!"
Fearless for himself, Louis entered at once upon his father's case. His first wish was to induce the Marquis to solicit the King to hear the son in defence of the parent; or, if that were denied, to allow Santa Cruz to present a written vindication of Ripperda's Austrian ministry. He gave the Marquis a simple narrative of every transaction, from the beginning of the business to the stage in which he left it at his recall; and, in the course of the explanation, he could not avoid noticing the destructive mystery into which the double conduct of Duke Wharton had involved every proceeding, even to those in which he had no explicable concern.
"You are already avenged of him," replied the Marquis, "General Stanhope transmitted to his government all the Duke de Ripperda reported to him of Wharton's secret practices in favour of the exiled Sovereign. George of Brunswick has taken alarm at so deep a scheme; and the consequence is, the confiscation of your enemy's estates, and a reward offered for his apprehension."
Louis was planet-struck at this information. The words which Wharton had spoken to him in the park of Bamborough, murmured in his ears,—"I put my life in your hands!"
"And my father has accused him!—Has set that life at a price!—The country in which we first met, is now no more to him than to me. He is an out-law,—I, a prisoner!"
Louis was silent under these thoughts; a stricture was on his heart, but he recovered himself, while Santa Cruz proceeded in his discourse.