Denounced. John Bloundelle-Burton

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СКАЧАТЬ took his hat from off the table as he finished, and left the room addressing no further remark to the other. And, quietly as he ever moved, he was about to descend the stairs when Lady Fordingbridge coming from out an open door, stopped him.

      "I wish to speak to you," she said, in a soft, low voice, "come within a moment," and, followed by Sholto, she led him back into the room she had just quitted. Here, too, a warm pleasant fire burned in the grate, while an agreeable aroma of violets stole through the apartment; and motioning her visitor to a seat her ladyship said:

      "Is the news true? Are they-is Mr. Elphinston in London?"

      "It is true, Kitty," he said. "Yet I know not how you heard it."

      "From my father who dreads as much to meet him as the craven in his library must do." She paused a moment, then she continued, "Have you seen him?"

      "Yes," he said, "I have seen him."

      "And," she asked, wistfully, "did he send no word of pardon-to me?"

      The Jesuit shook his head, though in a gentle kindly manner, ere he replied. "No, child. He spoke not of you."

      She sat gazing into the embers for a few moments more; then she went on.

      "Yet he must know, he cannot but know how basely I was deceived. You told me months ago that he had learnt some of the story from your brother's lips, who learnt it from you. Is there no room for pity in his heart? Will he never forgive?"

      "If he thinks aught," said the Jesuit, still very gently, to her, "it is that you should never have believed so base a tale. So at least he tells Douglas. To me he has never spoken of the matter."

      "Alas!" she said. "How could I doubt? Lord Fordingbridge I might have disbelieved, but my father!" and here she shuddered. "How could I think that he would stoop to practise such lies, such duplicity, on his own child?"

      Father Sholto made no answer to this remark, contenting himself with lifting his hands from his knees and warming the palms at the fire. And so they sat, neither speaking for two or three moments. Then she said:

      "Father, will you take a letter to him from me?"

      This time he lifted his bushy eyebrows instead of his hands, and looked at her from underneath them. Next he shrugged his shoulders, and then he said:

      "Kitty, for you I will do anything, for you who have ever been a dutiful daughter of the Church, ay! and a loyal adherent to a now sadly broken cause. Yet, child, what use to write? Nothing can undo what is done; you must make the best of matters. Solace your wounded heart with the rank you have gained, with your husband's now comfortable means, your reception at the Court of the Hanoverian king, for king he is, and, I fear, must be. However great the evil that was done, it must be borne. You and Bertie Elphinston are sundered for ever in this world, unless-"

      "Unless?" she repeated, with a swift glance from her eyes.

      "You both survive him. Yet, how shall such a thing be! He is no older than Elphinston himself, and, much as he has wronged that other, no reparation, not even his life, would set things right. If Bertie slew him he could not marry his victim's widow."

      "Alas! alas!" said Lady Fordingbridge, "the last thing he would wish to do now, even were I free, would be to have me for his wife. Me whom once he loved so tenderly."

      Once more the Jesuit twitched up his great eyebrows and muttered something to himself, and then seemed bent in thought. And as Kitty sat watching him she caught disconnected whispers from his lips. "Douglas might do it," she heard him say; "that way the gate would be open. Yet he cannot be spared, not yet," until at last he ceased, after which, looking up from his reverie, he said to her:

      "What do you wish to write to him, child? You, the Viscountess Fordingbridge, must have a care as to your epistles to unmarried men."

      "Be under no apprehension," she replied. "Yet, if-if-he would pardon me, would send me one little line to say-God! – that he does not hate me-oh! that he who once loved me so should come to hate me-then, then I might again be happy, a little happy. Father, I must write to him."

      "So be it," he answered. "Write if you must. I will convey the letter."

      CHAPTER III

      A WOMAN'S LETTER

      The next night Father Sholto, who was lodged in Lord Fordingbridge's house, took a hackney coach through the fields to Chelsea Church, and so was ferried across to Battersea. Then, because the evening was soft and mild and there was a young moon, he decided to walk on by the road to the next village, namely Wandsworth, which lay half an hour further on.

      "Poor Kitty," he thought to himself, as he felt the packet she had confided to him press against his breast, "poor Kitty! Why could she not have believed in Bertie's truth? Surely anything might have been set against the word of such a creature as Simeon Larpent, pupil of mine though he be. Peste! why was not I in Paris when all was happening? By now they would have been happy. They could have lived in France or Italy. We, the Society," and he crossed himself as he went on, "would have found the wherewithal; or even in America they might have, perhaps, been safe. Yet now! Now! Elphinston is a heartbroken man; Kitty, a heartbroken woman. Alas! alas!"

      With meditations such as these, for political Scotch Jesuit as Archibald Sholto was, and fierce partisan of his countrymen, Charles Stuart and his father James, there beat a kindly heart within him, he reached the long, straggling village street of Wandsworth. Then, turning off somewhat sharply to the right, he emerged after another five minutes upon a road above the strand of the river, on which, set back in shady gardens, in which grew firs, cedars, and chestnut trees, were some antique and picturesque houses built a hundred years before.

      At one of these, the first he came to, he knocked three times on the garden gate and rang a bell, the handle of which was set high in the door frame; and then in a moment a strong, heavy tread was heard coming from the house to the gate.

      "Who is it?" a man's voice asked from within.

      "Nunquam triumphans,"1 was the priest's answer, softly given, and as he spoke the postern door was opened, and a tall man stood before Sholto. In a moment their hands were clasped in each other's and their greetings exchanged.

      "'Tis good of you, Archie, to come again to-night," his younger brother said to him; "have you brought more news? How fares it with those in the Tower?"

      "Ill," replied the other. "As ill as may be. The trials are fixed, 'tis said, for July at latest. One will, however, escape. Tullibardine-"

      "The Marquis of Tullibardine escape! Why, then, there is hope for the others!"

      "Ay!" replied the elder brother, "there is, by the same way. Tullibardine is dying in the Tower. His life draws to a close."

      "Pish! What use such an escape? But come in, Archie. Bertie looks ever for you." Then he stopped on the gravel path and, gazing into the other's face as it shone in the moonlight, he said, "What of Kitty? Have you told her he is in London?"

      "Ay," replied the Jesuit, "and have on me now a letter to him from her, suing, I believe, for forgiveness. Douglas!" he exclaimed, seizing the other by the arm, "Bertie must pardon her. You must make him. Otherwise-"

      "What?"

      "I fear I know not what. Her love for him is what it ever was, stronger, fiercer, may be, because of the treachery that tore them asunder; she СКАЧАТЬ