“Ah,” she said, “why can I not go at once to the Tower? ’Tis so hard to wait!”
“The duke would go with you,” Lady Russell replied quietly, “and it is best so.”
“He has been so good to me—to us!” Betty murmured, a break in her voice.
She was thinking of her father’s averted face, her brother’s cruelty, her tittering, painted, heartless mother. “He is kinder than my own blood,” she said, “he and the king.”
“He remembered even the pension,” Lady Russell assented, “that good king!”
But Lady Betty scarcely heard her; she strained her ears to catch far other sounds. The rumble of a heavy coach, the closing of a door, steps in the hall. She fled to the top of the staircase, like a startled bird, and looked down; through a window beside her the sun shone in. There were many below, my Lord of Devonshire, a stately figure, the Duke of Ormond, young Sir Edward Mackie, half a dozen gentlemen. But she did not see them; what were they to her?
She saw a tall figure, a handsome, eager face, as Clancarty sprang up the stairs.
Lady Betty held out her arms, the sun shining in her face.
“Donough!” she cried, “my own true love!”
THE END