“What do you mean?” said I.
“Oh, just that hersel' told you to keep her informed of your movements and you did so. In Bernard and you she had a pair of spies instead of only the one had she trusted in either.”
“And what in all the world would she be doing that for?”
“What but for her lover the prince?” said he with a sickening promptness that some way left me without a doubt he spoke with knowledge. “Foul fa' the day he ever clapt eyes on her! for she has the cunning of the fox, though by all accounts a pleasant person. They say she has a sister that's in the service of the queen at St. James's, and who kens but for all her pretended affection for Tearlach she may be playing all the time into the hands of his enemies? She made you and this Bernard the means of putting an end to the Jesuit plot upon his Royal Highness by discovering the source of it, and now the Jesuits, as I'm told, are to be driven furth the country and putten to the horn.”
I was stunned by this revelation of what a tool I had been in the hands of one I fancied briefly that I was in love with. For long I sat silent pondering on it, and at last unable to make up my mind whether I should laugh or swear. Kilbride, while affecting to pay no heed to me, was keen enough to see my perturbation, and had, I think, a sort of pride that he had been able to display such an astuteness.
“I'm afraid,” said I at last, “there is too much probability in all that you have said and thought. I am a stupendous ass, Mr. MacKellar, and you are a very clever man.”
“Not at all, not at all!” he protested hurriedly. “I have just some natural Hielan' interest in affairs of intrigue, and you have not (by your leave) had my advantages of the world, for I have seen much of the evil as well as the good of it, and never saw a woman's hand in aught yet but I wondered what mischief she was planning. There's much, I'm telling you, to be learned about a place like Fontainebleau or Versailles, and I advantaged myself so well of my opportunities there that you could not drive a hole but I would put a nail in it, as the other man said.”
“Well,” said I, “my hope is that I may never meet the woman again, and that's without a single angry feeling to her.”
“You need not fear about that,” said he. “The thing that does not lie in your road will never break your leg, as the other man said, and I'll be surprised if she puts herself in your way again now that her need for you is done. A score of your friends in Dunkerque could have told you that she was daft about him. I might be vexed for you if I did not know from your own mouth of the other one in Mearns.”
“We'll say nothing about that,” I says, “for that's a tale that's by wi'. She's lost to me.”