CHAPTER XXVII
THE TRAITOR’S GATE
POOR Lady Betty, half distracted, fled from the house into Leicester Fields, trying to find the party that had preceded her with her husband as a prisoner. The darkness and the peril of the London streets at that late hour did not enter her thoughts. Bareheaded and without a cloak to shield her from the cold night air, she ran around the square.
She saw lights in the adjacent houses, she heard voices in the distance, but she only looked for one—her husband. She took no thought of the madness of her project; she sped on and on, and might have come into some great peril had she not fallen almost into the arms of a man who was running toward Lord Sunderland’s mansion. They came upon each other in the darkness; in her grief and nervousness she uttered a little cry, and he knew her voice.
“Lady Clancarty!” he exclaimed, stopping short.
It was young Mackie.
At first she did not recognize him, but when she did, she caught his arm with a frantic appeal. The light from a dim lantern overhead shone on her white face.
“My husband!” she cried, “my Lord Clancarty. They have dragged him away to prison. My—nay, I will not call him my brother—that man yonder, Charles Spencer, betrayed him—betrayed my husband, and they came into my very rooms to arrest him—to tear us apart, and he has gone,” she added wildly, “gone to the Tower.”
“I know,” he replied, deeply moved, “I know. I was at Vernon’s house and heard it after your—after Lord Spencer got the warrant. I came to warn you but, alas, I am too late.”
“Yes, too late!” cried Betty, a little wildly, “too late; but I am going to the Tower—I am going to my husband!”