"You hate him!" he exclaimed.
"From the depths of my heart. How can it be otherwise? His treachery--when I learnt it--made me despise him; his conduct since has turned my contempt to hatred. Oh," she exclaimed, "it is awful, terrible for a woman to hate her husband! Yet what cause have I to do aught else? When he speaks--though I have long since ceased to reply to anything he says--his words are nothing but sneers and scorn; sometimes of you, sometimes of me. And he gloats over having separated us, of having taken your place, while at the same time he is so bitter against me that, if he dared, I believe he would kill me. Moreover, he fears your vengeance. That is another reason why, if he could betray you to the Government, he would."
"'Tis by betrayal alone that we can be injured," Bertie said, thoughtfully. "None of our names are known, nor in the proscribed list. Yet how can he do it? He it was who planned the attack upon the Fubbs[[2]] to be made when the Elector crossed from Holland; he who disseminated the tracts, nay, had them printed, counselling his taking off. He was worse than any--no honest Jacobite ever stooped to assassination!--and many of us know it."
"Be sure," she replied, "that what he could do would be done in secret; Bert--Mr. Elphinston, who is that man who has passed the arbour twice or more, and looks always so fixedly at you?"
"I know not," he replied, "yet he has been ever near Douglas and me--he and another man--since we entered the gardens. Perhaps a Government spy. Well, he can know nought of me."
The man she had mentioned was a tall, stoutly-built individual, plainly enough clad in an old rusty black suit of broadcloth, patched black stockings and thick-soled shoes with rusty iron buckles upon them, and bore at his side a stout hanger. He might be a spy, it was true, but he might also have been anything else, a low follower of the worst creatures who infested the gardens, a gambling-hell tout, or a bagnio pimp. Yet his glance from under his vizard was keen and penetrating as it was fixed on them, but especially on Elphinston, each time he passed the summer house wherein they sat.
But now their conversation, which to both seemed all too short and to have left so much unsaid, was interrupted by the advent of Douglas Sholto, who came swiftly down the shell-strewn path, and, seeing them in the arbour, paused and entered at once.
"Kitty," he said, grasping her hand, "this is not the greeting I had intended to give you, though it's good to look upon your bonnie face again. But, Bertie, listen. We are watched, followed, perhaps known; indeed, I am sure of it. One of those fellows who have kept near to us, and whom we saw at Wandsworth as we set forth--I see the other down the path--spoke but now to three soldiers of the Coldstreams. Perhaps 'twas to identify us; you remember the First Battalion at Culloden," he added grimly; "perhaps to call on them for help. Bertie, we must be away at once."
"'Tis as I suspected," said Lady Fordingbridge, now pale as ashes and trembling from head to foot. "My words have too soon come true. How, how has he done it?"
"Farewell, Kate," said Bertie Elphinston, "we must, indeed, hasten if this is true. Yet first let me take you to your father and friends. Then," with a firm set look on his face, he said, "Douglas and I must see our way through this, if 'tis as he suspects. Come, Kate."