"Stop this fooling," said the Jesuit, looking angrily at him; "is this the time for you to be joking and jeering when everything is lost? You have the journals there, you know well what has happened. The principals of the noblest cause, of the most sublime restoration that would have ever taken place, are prisoners with their lives in forfeit, some in London, some in Carlisle gaol, and some at Inverness, and you sit gibing there. Pardieu! sometimes I think you are a fool instead of the knave I once deemed you."
"If," said the viscount, scowling at the other as he spoke, "you deem yourself called upon to address me in such a manner, I shall be forced, Mr. Archibald, to also alter my style of address to you, and to speak both to and of you as the Reverend Archibald Sholto, priest of the Society of Jesus, and an avowed Jacobite. And you will remember that here, in England, at such a moment as this, to be so proclaimed could not be otherwise than fraught with unpleasant consequences to you. Moreover, you will have the goodness to remember that now--since the disastrous events, to your side, of Culloden, the Viscount Fordingbridge is a fervent Hanoverian."
"I will remember," said the priest, "that however desirous the Viscount Fordingbridge may be to espouse the cause of the House of Hanover, it is not in his power to do so, so long as there remains one Stuart to assert a claim to the throne of his ancestors. When that race ceases to exist, when no living Stuart is left to call for aid, then perhaps, you may be permitted to become Hanoverian, not before. Now, my Lord Fordingbridge, listen to me, while I go over the cards I hold in my hand against Simeon Larpent, my whilom scholar at St. Omer, who----"
"Nay!" exclaimed the other, "do nothing of the sort. I retract, I had forgotten. Recall nothing. Yet, for my safety, I must appear an adherent of King George. Indeed, to-morrow I attend his levée."
"For the good of the Stuart cause," the other said, "you will continue as you have begun since your return to this country, to appear an adherent of this King George; for the good of the cause that is not yet lost. There will be another rising ere long, be sure of that; if it comes not before, it will do so at the death of the present usurper. Now, listen to the news I bring you."
"What is it?" the other asked, while he paled as he did so. "What?"
"The worst that you can hear. Elphinston is in London."
"Elphinston here! Is he mad? His life is not worth an hour's purchase."
"He knows that," replied the Jesuit coolly, "as well as you or I do. Yet he heeds it not. Why should he? Are not other men's lives doomed who are now in London? Men who," he went on, speaking coldly and with great distinctness, "brought money into England to aid the cause; men," still his voice fell more and more crisp upon the other's ear, "who did endeavour to compass the death of George as he returned from his last visit to Herrenhausen; men who----"
"Silence, you Jesuit devil," interrupted the other. "Sometimes I wonder that you do not fear to speak as you do; that you do not dread that your own death may be compassed."