“And love and death are near in my mind too,” replied Roger, with the same quiet tone in which Bess spoke. “It will be death to any man who speaks an ill word against the woman I love, and death to her if she betrays me; and in every way my love will be guarded by my life. You are right; we are made of sterner stuff than most, and—”
“We must beware. But know this: if this moment you should offer to make me your wife, I have the courage to say nay, for I know ’twould mean life-long shame for you, and I am not the woman to make so evil a return for honorable love. And so, I say, let us not again so forget ourselves, and remember rather the gulf between us.”
“Bess Lukens,” said Roger, taking her hand as if he were taking that of a princess, “I have not the words to tell you how much I hold you in honor,—the more so that you have had no shield in this stormy life but your own born goodness, and I love you from the bottom of my heart. You have said there is a gulf between us, but that need not prevent us from being loving friends, and I hold you as the dearest friend I have on earth.”
CHAPTER III
ONCE MORE AT EGREMONT
THE summer and the winter, and again the summer and the winter came and went, and still Robert Egremont lay in prison. There was some murmuring about his case, but King William was in the midst of his Irish campaign, and had little thought of one contumacious Jacobite more or less. When William returned to England, he inaugurated a policy of conciliation toward the disaffected, and most of the Jacobites in prison were offered their liberty on easy terms.
Roger Egremont’s case had always been a perplexing one, the more so as he continued to be an object of popular sympathy. A parliamentary inquiry was threatened by the Tory parliament of 1690, in particular concerning the giving away of his estate to his half-brother. The Danby ministry thought it had found a solution of the problem in this particular case, by causing Roger Egremont to be informed that if he would make an application for pardon, it would be readily granted, together with a considerable sum of money, and that he might eventually hope for the restitution of his land.
To this, Roger made no answer except by a contemptuous silence. The offer was therefore repeated, and the reply, in Roger Egremont’s handwriting,—very beautiful by this time,—was:—
“Mr. Egremont, of Egremont, in the County of Devon, has done nothing for which he should ask pardon of the Prince of Orange. Mr. Egremont confidently expects to be released at an early day, on the demand of English freemen, and would not therefore lower himself by asking favors of a foreigner and a usurping prince.”
Clearly, imprisonment had not broken the spirit of this rash and headstrong young man. In truth, although Roger could never have brought his haughty spirit to ask pardon for what he had done, yet, at that very time, a Jacobite rising was daily expected in England, and Roger fully expected to have the pleasure of shortly telling King James at his palace of Whitehall, of the manner in which the Earl of Danby’s offer had been spurned.
The years that had passed had improved Roger’s looks as well as his mind, although not to so great a degree.