"His Majesty's faithful subjects have gained a great and most decisive victory near Blair of Athole; but, alas! my gallant friend Lord Dundee—"
"Has fallen?" said Edith, anticipating the rest of his tidings.
"True, most true: he has fallen in the arms of victory, and not a man remains of talents and influence sufficient to fill up his loss in King James's service. This, Edith, is no time for temporizing with our duty. I have given directions to raise my followers, and I must take leave of you this evening."
"Do not think of it, my lord," answered Edith; "your life is—essential to your friends,—do not throw it away in an adventure so rash. What can your single arm, and the few tenants or servants who might follow you, do against the force of almost all Scotland, the Highland clans only excepted?"
"Listen to me, Edith," said Lord Evandale. "I am not so rash as you may suppose me, nor are my present motives of such light importance as to affect only those personally dependent on myself. The Life Guards, with whom I served so long, although new-modelled and new-officered by the Prince of Orange, retain a predilection for the cause of their rightful master; and "—and here he whispered as if he feared even the walls of the apartment had ears—"when my foot is known to be in the stirrup, two regiments of cavalry have sworn to renounce the usurper's service, and fight under my orders. They delayed only till Dundee should descend into the Lowlands; but since he is no more, which of his successors dare take that decisive step, unless encouraged by the troops declaring themselves! Meantime, the zeal of the soldiers will die away. I must bring them to a decision while their hearts are glowing with the victory their old leader has obtained, and burning to avenge his untimely death."
"And will you, on the faith of such men as you know these soldiers to be," said Edith, "take a part of such dreadful moment?"
"I will," said Lord Evandale,—"I must; my honour and loyalty are both pledged for it."
"And all for the sake," continued Miss Bellenden, "of a prince whose measures, while he was on the throne, no one could condemn more than Lord Evandale?"
"Most true," replied Lord Evandale; "and as I resented, even during the plenitude of his power, his innovations on Church and State, like a freeborn subject, I am determined I will assert his real rights, when he is in adversity, like a loyal one. Let courtiers and sycophants flatter power and desert misfortune; I will neither do the one nor the other."
"And if you are determined to act what my feeble judgment must still term rashly, why give yourself the pain of this untimely meeting?"