“Come now, Roger,” cried Bess, “you can’t deny ’tis a monstrous queer thing to do. I’ve seen some of them Jesuits in Newgate, and I never saw one that I didn’t think had sense and learning enough to have kept out, if he had wanted to. But I like Mr. Dicky, for all his popery; and as I have no friends but French friends, except yourself, I’d like to have another English friend in Mr. Richard Egremont.”
“I’ll tell him all you say,” said Roger, laughing; and then growing serious, he continued,—
“It would make me easier at heart if you had Dicky for a friend; because I go away shortly for a soldier, with my corps, and some of us will not come back.”
The blood dropped suddenly out of Bess’s rosy face: but she said quite steadily,—
“You go to England?”
“Alas, no! I go first upon a journey to the Rhine, and then join the army of the Maréchal de Luxembourg.”
“And with whom go you upon this journey?”
“With the Duke of Berwick,” replied Roger; and then, knowing she must soon find out all the particulars in a place where all the world gossiped, he added desperately, “We accompany the Duchess de Beaumanoir and her niece, Mademoiselle d’Orantia, to Orlamunde, in the Rhine land.”
He forced himself to meet her eyes as he spoke, and saw in them fear and reproach. Yet she only said,—
“Mademoiselle d’Orantia was the lady you made hay with in the meadow?”