I suppose that some species of sanity returned to me after a while, for I found myself presently pacing up and down the terrace by the river, and considering that this was a strange hour—eight o'clock at night, to be searching out one of Her Majesty's ladies; and, after that, little by little, persons and matters began to take their right proportions on them again. I could not, I perceived, merely demand where Mistress Jermyn lodged, beat down her door and carry her away with me safe to Hare Street. Their Majesties of England still stood for something in Whitehall, and so did reason and commonsense, and Dolly's own good name. I began to perceive that matters were not so simple.
I do not think I reasoned at all as to her dangers there; but I was as one who sees a flower on a dunghill. One does not argue about the matter, or question whether it be smirched or not, nor how it got there. Neither did I consider at all how my cousin came to be at Court, nor whether any evil had yet come to her. I did not even consider that I did not know whether she were but just come, or had been there a great while. I considered only that she must be got out of it—and how to set about it.
I might have stood and paced there till midnight, had not one of the sentinels at the water-gate—placed there I suppose, as Mr. Chiffinch had told me just now, as an additional security, after nightfall—stepped out from his place and challenged me. I had had the word, of course, as I came in; and I gave it him, and he was contented. But I was not. Here, thought I, is my opportunity.
"Here," said I, "can you tell me where Mistress Dorothy Jermyn is lodged?"
He was a young fellow, plainly from the country, as I saw, by his look in the light of the lantern he had.
"No, sir," he said.
"Think again," I said. "She is under the protection of Her Grace of
Portsmouth. She is one of the Queen's ladies."
"Is she a little lady, sir—from the country—that came last month?"
"Yes," I said, feigning that I knew all about it, and trying to control my voice. "That is she."
"Why, she is with the others, sir," he said.