Out in the Forty-Five Part 49

"And if not, Madam?"

"If not, my dear, we shall but have done our duty. Good-night. Will you accept a little reminder of this evening--and of Lady Inverness?"

I looked up in astonishment. Was this beautiful woman, with her tinge of sadness in face and voice, the woman who had so long stood first at the Court of Montefiascone--the Mistress of the Robes to Queen Clementina, and as some said, of the heart of King James?

My Lady Inverness drew from her finger a small ring of chased gold. "It will fit you, I think, my dear. You are a brave maid, and I like you.

Farewell."

I am not at all sure that my Aunt Kezia would have allowed me to accept it. Some, even among the Tories, thought my Lady Inverness a wicked woman; others reckoned her an injured and a slandered one. I gave her what Father calls "the benefit of the doubt," thanked her, and accepted the ring. I do not know whether I did right or wrong.

To run down-stairs, say good-bye to Mr Raymond,--by the way, would Mr Raymond have allowed my Lady to enter his house, if he had believed the tales against her?--and hasten back with Ephraim to Bloomsbury Square, took but few minutes. Lucette let us in; I think she had been watching.

"The good Lord has watched over Mademoiselle," said she, as she took my cloak from me.

Ephraim had gone back to the drawing-room, and I followed. I glanced at the French clock on the mantelpiece, where a gold Cupid in a robe of blue enamel was mowing down an array of hearts with a scythe, and saw that we had been away a little over an hour. Could that be all? How strange it seemed! People were chattering, and flirting fans, and playing cards, as if nothing at all had happened. Miss Newton was sitting where I had left her, talking to Mr Robert Page. Grandmamma sat in her chair, just as usual. n.o.body seemed to have missed us, except Hatty, who said with a smile,--"I had lost you, Cary, for the last half-hour."

"Yes," said I, "something detained me out of the room."

I only exchanged one other sentence in the course of the evening with Ephraim:

"You will let me know how things go on? I shall be very anxious."

"Of course. Yes, I will take care of that."

And then the company broke up, and I helped Hatty to bed, and prayed from my heart for Colonel Keith and Angus, and did not fall asleep till I had heard Saint Olave's clock strike two. When I woke, I had been making jumb.a.l.l.s in the drawing-room with somebody who was both my Lady Inverness and my Aunt Kezia, and who told me that Colonel Keith had been appointed Governor of the American plantations, and that he would have to be dressed in corduroy.

When I arose in the morning, I could--and willingly would--have thought the whole a dream. But there on my finger, a solid contradiction, was my Lady Inverness's ring.

For four days I heard nothing more. On the Friday, my Uncle Charles told us that rumours were abroad of the escape of a prisoner, and he hoped it might be Angus. My Aunt Dorothea wanted to hear all the particulars. I sat and listened, looking as grave as I could.

"Why, it seems they must have bribed some fellow to carry in a basket of foul clothes, and then to change clothes with the prisoner, and so let him get out. There appears to have been a girl in it as well--a girl and a man. I suppose they were both bribed, very likely. Anyhow, the prisoner is set free, I only hope it is young Drummond, Cary."

I said I hoped so too.

"But, dear me, what will become of the man that went in?" asked my Aunt Dorothea.

"Oh, he'll be hanged, sure enough," said my Uncle Charles. "Only some low fellow, I suppose, that was willing to sell himself."

"A man does not sell his life in a hurry," said my Aunt Dorothea.

"My dear," replied my Uncle Charles, "there are men who would sell their own mothers and children."

"Oh, I dare say, but not themselves," said she.

"I suppose somebody cared for him," observed Hatty.

I found it hard work to keep silence.

"Only low people like himself," said Grandmamma. "Those creatures will do anything for money."

And then, Caesar bringing in a note with Mrs Newton's compliments, the talk went off to something else.

On the Sat.u.r.day evening there was an extra a.s.sembly, and I caught Ephraim as soon as ever I could.

"Ephraim, they have found it out!" I said, in a whisper.

"Turn your back on the room," said he, quietly. "Yes, Cary, they have.

There goes Keith's first chance of safety--yet it was a poor one from the beginning."

"Can n.o.body intercede for him?"

"With whom? The Electress is dead: and they say she was the only one who had much influence with the Elector."

"He has daughters," I suggested.

Ephraim shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that was a very poor hope.

"Your friend Mr Raymond, being a Whig," I urged, "might be able to do something."

"I will see," said he. "Do you know that Miss Keith is to be in London this evening?"

"Annas? No! I have never heard a word about it."

"I was told so," said Ephraim, looking hard at an engraving which he had taken up.

I wondered very much who told him.

"She might possibly go to the Princess Caroline. People say she is the best of the family. Bad is the best, I am afraid." [Note 2.]

"How did Mr Raymond come to know my Lady Inverness?"

"Oh, you discovered who she was, did you?"

"She told me herself."

"Ah!--I cannot say; I am not sure that he knew anything of her before Tuesday night. She was our superior officer, and gave orders which we obeyed--that was all."

"I cannot understand how Mr Raymond could have anything to do with it!"

cried I.

"Nor I, precisely. I believe there are wheels within wheels. Is he not a friend of your uncle, Mr Drummond?--an old friend, I mean, when they were young men."

"Possibly," said I; "I do not know."

Somebody came up now, and drew Ephraim away. I had no more private talk with him. But how could he come to know anything about Annas? And where is she going to be?