CHAPTER XXX
MY LORD OF DEVONSHIRE
LADY BETTY’S weakness passed. She was too strong, too loving, and too determined by nature, to give way to the tears and sighs of a whining woman. So stern was her face and so resolute that even Alice, with all the old claims of faithful service and affection, dared not offer her any consolation save to kiss her hand humbly and sadly.
“Ah, Alice,” she said, “I cannot talk to you. When I was happy I chattered like a magpie; but now that I feel so much I am tongue-tied; yet I understand, my girl, I understand.”
“I wish I could help you,” Alice said, in tears, “I wish I could do something for you both!”
Betty shook her head sadly. “There is no one but the king. Ah, Alice, in my careless days I have mocked his Dutch accent and his Dutch ways—but now—I go to him as my one hope under heaven! How foolish I have been, how heartless!”
She would not stay in Leicester House; she only lingered long enough to select her plainest gown and a cloak and hood, and to take such jewels and money as belonged to her individually, before she and Alice set out, attended by the tireless Sir Edward. Not this time to the Tower, however, but to a mediator who might approach the king with more likelihood of success than any one; the widow of the martyred Lord Russell. From Sir Edward Mackie, Lady Russell learned that morning the whole story, and her heart was touched by the despair of the young countess, suffering as she had suffered. Though of all women Lady Russell was the last one to sympathize with a Jacobite, yet her compassion moved her to forgive her enemies, and from her Lady Clancarty might look for more help than from any one, for she was an honored and revered friend of King William’s.
So to Lady Russell’s house in Bloomsbury the young Countess of Clancarty directed her steps, and it was on the way thither that they met the coach of my Lord of Devonshire. The great emblazoned coach drawn by four stout Flanders mares, with outriders in crimson and gold lace, came clattering and rumbling along the street, the men cursing and shouting at the other vehicles that threatened to stop his grace’s way. Betty and her escort stood back to escape the mud from the kennel as it passed.