IT happened that Lady Russell advised delay in the appeal to the king; she wished to wait for the results of the interview between his majesty and the three dukes. Surely no fair woman ever won greater mediators as quickly as did poor Lady Betty.
Lady Russell hoped little, however, from their efforts, though she said not a word of this to the distracted young wife but, instead, pointed out the advantages of waiting until they could appeal to William quite alone—as two women in distress—and with no connection with any political embroglio. Indeed, the older woman knew the king well enough to be sure that his heart might be touched by a woman’s grief, though in affairs of state he could be adamant. In spite of Betty’s impatience and misery, they waited, and Devonshire, Ormond, and Bedford, two great English peers and the greatest Irish one, went up to Kensington to save one young woman’s heart from breaking, caring little enough for the Jacobite earl himself.
It was during this season of delay, when despair and hope were mingled, that one of Devonshire’s gentlemen brought a packet from the Tower and gave it to Lady Clancarty with much elaborate courtesy. And she? She fled with it to her room—Lady Russell had insisted upon keeping her under her own roof—and she kissed and wept over it, before she opened it, although she knew that the Governor of the Tower had read it all before her, hard necessity!
It contained a ring, a letter, and the dried sprig of shamrock, and her eyes were half blinded with tears as she tried to read.
“My own dear wife,” it ran, “a gentleman from my Lord of Devonshire has just been with me and has told me of your noble devotion to me in this dark hour, of your efforts in my behalf. Dear heart, dear heart, how can I write all I feel, or tell my gratitude to the great duke for befriending you? To tell the truth, I have little hope that my pardon can be obtained, but I do hope and pray to see you once more! Ah, the separation, Betty, I did not know how hard it would be to bear—doubly hard now that I know you suffer, too. Bear up, brave heart, under the despair also; indeed, I know you will, for my sake, and afterwards—you will go to see my mother, who is, I know, broken hearted—and you will comfort her for me. Ah, I did not mean to write to you sadly, sweetheart, but the loss of you drives me to distraction. I see you constantly as you looked unconscious in my arms, and it wrings my heart. Dear love, I send you my ring and our bit of shamrock, and I will not believe that I shall not see you again—’twould be too cruel.
“Dear heart, sweet wife,—farewell!”
Poor Lady Betty, she wept over it and caressed it like a living thing, for he had touched it; and she hid the shamrock and the ring in her bosom.
In this distracted state she waited forty-eight hours longer, until she knew that the three dukes had obtained no definite promise from the king and that the Earl of Sunderland, who was supposed to command his majesty’s ear, was proclaiming everywhere his approval of Spencer’s deed. The cloud grew darker rather than brighter, and in her agony she would have gone alone to Kensington, for Lady Russell’s caution seemed to her only distracting delay.
However, the older woman only lingered to take her steps more surely. She drew up, with Devonshire’s help, a formal petition to the king, not trusting to any verbal or interrupted statement of the case, and at last, just when the young countess was reduced almost to madness, she signified her readiness to accompany her to court.
The king was at Kensington and the two set out, a little before noon, in Lady Russell’s carriage, for the palace. Betty had worn her heart out with grief and impatience; she had not slept and she had scarcely tasted food, except under compulsion, and was a shadow of herself—but still a beautiful one. Lady Russell knew intuitively all that the younger woman had suffered, and when they were in the carriage, she laid her hand gently over Betty’s.