Denounced: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

"But what will you do?" again asked the practical hostess. "How live? Mr. Fane has, you say, no longer sufficient youth or activity to earn a living for you at the fence school--can you, dear, earn enough for both?"

"I think so," Kate replied, "by returning to Paris. That we must do--there is nothing to be earned here. But, in Paris, Archibald Sholto has much influence in the court circles; he knows even the King and--and--the new favourite, La Pompadour, who has deposed Madame de Chateauroux. Also he is a friend of Cardinal Tencin, who owes much to the exiled Stuarts. It is, he thinks, certain that some place either at the court, or in the prince's household--if he has escaped from Scotland, which God grant!--or in the Chevalier St. George's, at Rome, might be found for me--a place which would enable me to keep my old father from want for the rest of his life."

"Kate, you are a brave woman, and a good one, too, for from what you have told me your father himself has behaved none too well to you, and----"

"I must forget that," the other replied, "and remember only how for years he struggled hard to keep a home for us, to bring me up as a lady. I must put away every thought of his one wrong to me and remember only all that he has done for my good."

Meanwhile Kate's determination to part from her husband--if, as no one doubted, he it was who had endeavoured to betray the others to the Government--was well known to her three friends; and therefore, with them as with her and her father, preparations were being hurried on by which they also might return to France. For them there was, as there had been before the invasion of Scotland and England, the means whereby to exist; Douglas and Bertie had not sacrificed their commissions in the French regiments to which they belonged, and Archibald was employed by the Stuart cause as an agent, was also a member of the College of St. Omer, and was a priest of St. Eustache. That Bertie Elphinston would ever have left London while his kinsman and the head of his house, Arthur, Lord Balmerino, lay in the Tower awaiting his trial and certain death was not to be supposed, had not a message come from that unhappy nobleman ordering him to go. Also, he bade him waste no time in remaining where he was hourly in danger and could, at the same time, be of no earthly good.

"He bids me tell you, Bertie," said Lady Balmerino, in a meeting which she contrived to have with the young man on one of those evenings when both were lodged in the Eastend, and while she wept piteously as she spoke, "he bids me tell you that it is his last commandment to you, as still the head of your house and the name you bear, to flee from England. The rank and title of Balmerino must die with him, but he lays upon you the task of bearing and, he hopes, perpetuating the name of Elphinston honourably. Also he sends you his blessing as from a dying old man to a young one, bids you trust in God and also serve the House of Stuart while there is any member of it left. And if more be needed to make you fly, he orders you to do it for your mother's sake."

After that Elphinston knew where his duty lay--knew that he must return to France. It was hard, he swore, to leave England and also, thereby, to leave the scoundrel Fordingbridge behind and alive, still he felt that it must be so. Fordingbridge merited death--yet he must escape it!

But he had one consolation, too. Ere long Kate would be back in Paris--it was not possible that her husband could be innocent--therefore he would sometimes see her. A poor consolation, indeed, he told himself, to simply be able to see the woman who was to have been his wife yet was now another man's--no power on earth, no determination on her part to sever her existence from Fordingbridge could alter that!--yet it was something. Consequently, he with the others set about the plans for their departure.

Now, to so arrange and manage for this departure, they looked to James McGlowrie, who had both the will and the power to help them.

An old acquaintance of his in Scotland, when both were boys who had not then gone forth into the world, McGlowrie had kept up an occasional correspondence with Archibald Sholto until the present time, and thereby had been able to afford him assistance and had proved himself invaluable when Fordingbridge informed against them. Indeed, had McGlowrie not known where Archibald Sholto was living when in London, Geordie McNab's information derived from the Scotch Secretary's Office could never have been utilized, and Archibald Sholto must at least have been taken. And now he was to be even more practically useful than before--it was in his cattle-trading boats that all were, one by one, to be conveyed to the continent. "Though," said Jemmy, as he arranged plans with them one night in a little inn at Limehouse where they were in the habit of meeting, and where there was little danger of their being discovered, "I can give none of ye any certain guarantee, so to speak as it were, of ye getting over in safety. Infernal sloops o' war and bomb-ketches, and the devil knows what else, are prowling about the waters looking for rebels, and as like as not may light upon the one or other of you."