John Bloundelle-Burton

“ Kate, we meet again, perhaps for the last time on earth; let me say at once, there is nothing for me to forgive. If fault there was, then it was mine. Let mine, too, be the blame. I should have told you that Elphinston of Glenbervy was about to marry Mademoiselle Baufremont. Yet, he had sworn me to silence, had bidden me, upon our distant kinsmanship, to hold my peace, had sought my assistance to enable him to wed the woman whom he loved. How could I disclose his secret even to you? How could I foresee that a scheming devil would turn so small a thing to so great an account? ”

“ He will never trouble you again, I do believe. Let him, therefore, go his evil way, and go you yours in peace and happiness. I would that I could see a way to your obtaining the one happiness that should belong to you; wish it for your sake and Bertie's. But it cannot be. Not yet, at least. Therefore bear up. Heaven in its mercy will, I know, protect and prosper you."
"Good-bye, good-bye, Archie," Kate replied, as she sobbed unrestrainedly. "Oh, how unhappy we are! We looked forward to so much in this meeting here, and see--see how it has ended! Shall we ever be happy again?" ”

“ It was to Bertie, to Mr. Elphinston."
"Great heavens!" exclaimed Lady Ames, who, in the excitement of all that had happened since that terrible morning, had absolutely forgotten that this other one was also as mysteriously missing as Lord Fordingbridge had been--"great heavens! to Mr. Elphinston. Yes, it must be. Each word would apply to him. O Kate! what does it all mean?"
"God knows what it means; what it points to none can doubt--to the fact that in the prison from which they brought him the other one is incarcerated; though on what charge I cannot dream. ”

“ Yet this man stands in evil case, too; he has murdered, I judge from what he has now said, a priest--a Jesuit; if so, he must die, for the Jesuits are powerful in the Bastille--Gerville, the chaplain, is himself one. And, if he is a murderer, he should die."
"In truth he should," replied Bertie, "nor would I lift a finger to save him. For he is a murderer in more senses than one: he has slain two lives already--my own and another. ”

“ You cannot live on air, and--which is almost worse--you cannot marry someone who will give you a good home. And you so pretty, too!" she added.
"Marry again!" exclaimed Kate, her eyes glistening as she spoke. "Heaven forbid! Have I not had enough of marriage? One experience should suffice, I think."
"It has indeed been a sad one," answered Lady Belrose, who had herself no intention of continuing her widowhood much longer, and was indeed at that moment privately affianced to Sir Charles Ames. "But, Kate, if your monster were dead you might be happy yet." ”

“ O Kate! O Kate! Those plans, those projects for the future!" His voice broke and failed him as he continued: "You have not forgotten them! Kate, do you remember how once we pictured ourselves growing old together, how we meditated on the time that should come when, our lives done with, we should rest together in some calm and peaceful grave?"
"No," she said, "no," and sprang to her feet excitedly. "No! no! no! I will not remember--will recall nothing, for if I do I shall go mad. Remember nothing--'tis best so. Go, Bertie Elphinston, go to your duties, as I will go to mine. ”

“ Resistance is useless. I have sworn here, upon this spot, to avenge Douglas; I will keep my oath. Till you stand upon the scaffold you are mine."
"He has a weapon to his hand," the woman said, still with her own pointing at him as if it were the hand of Fate. "See!" Then, as though she were one inspired, she said, as she turned to him, "Give me the knife."
Whether his mind was gone at last, or whether fear had so overcome Fordingbridge that he was no longer master of his actions, Sholto was never able to decide. ”

“ Then, with another bow, the duke begged the Prince to precede them, motioning also to Bertie to accompany them.
"I am glad to see you, Captain Elphinston," Charles Edward said as they approached the hall. "I have thought often of you and of your poor friend, and mine, Mr. Sholto. And--you will find in my house one to whom your coming may be a new life. You understand?"
"I understand, your Royal Highness. I should have been here long before, but that I have been a prisoner in the Bastille."
"In the Bastille! You! So that is where you have been hidden from all human knowledge. ”

“ Up from the guests' room below there came the hubbub of those at supper, the shouts of the copper captains for more petits pigolets of wine, mixed with the clattering of plates and dishes, the calls of other travellers for food, and the general disturbance that accompanies a French inn full of visitors, as Father Sholto answered gravely:
"My child, he might have been a priest and I not know it; God might even have allowed so wicked a scheme to enter his heart as that, being one, he should go through a form of marriage with an innocent woman. ”

“ All, all will be dead and gone. My mother long since, Kate almost of a certainty; Douglas, too; even the scoundrel Fordingbridge! O God!" he cried, wrought up by these reflections, "release me from this place, I beseech Thee, release me; even though it be only by death. Let me not linger on here untried for a fault I know not of, uncondemned and forgotten. Take my life, but not my freedom while I live. ”

“ Monsieur le Marquis is not to suppose we shall entertain him for ever; no, no! Neither is he to imagine that because he has dwelt with us so long--it is a little long, I concede--he shall never leave us."
The old man regarded him fixedly for a moment, then he sighed and gave a true French shrug to his shoulders. "If," he exclaimed, in his gentle, well-bred voice, the aristocratic tones of which he had never lost--"if it pleases you to wound me, Bluet, you must do so. Yet I know not why. We have always been such good friends."
"Cease," said Bertie to the turnkey in a whisper. ”

“ These men know me--know us--well enough for what we are. 'Tis not difficult to guess whence comes their knowledge! They may accuse her of being a rebel, too. Oh! Kate, Kate! what will be the end of it all; what the finish of our wrecked and ruined lives?"
"No harm can come to her, I tell you," replied his comrade. "Why, man, heart up! Has not the fox, Fordingbridge, made his peace with George; how shall they arrest his wife or her father as rebels? Tush! 'tis not to be thought on. ”

“ Omer, unobservant of the ripening fruit in the rich orchards all about, and even of the glorious sunset behind him--"a cold answer, yet what else to make? I cannot tell her that it must be the Bastille in which Bertie is confined. Merciful Father in heaven!" he broke off, "what can he have done to be there? Because it was to the Bastille that I, determined never to loose my hold on Douglas's murderer, procured he should be sent. Also I dread to tell her what Fordingbridge's crime was, who the avenger of that crime is. I dread! I dread! It is more than I have strength to dare." ”

“ On the backstairs of each flight in the houses of Kensington-square there existed precisely what exists in the present day in most houses, namely, windows half-way up each flight, and, gazing out into the garden--up and down the gravel walks of which the visitor was walking, sometimes stopping to inspect or to smell some of the roses already in bloom, and sometimes casting glances of impatience at the house--Archibald saw the man who, later on, was to deliver Kate's message to Bertie. ”

“ It was not only Charles Edward who was affected by this manly speech; even De Biron, who understood English well, and De Vaudreville, who did not, but evidently guessed accurately what he had said, were touched by it.
"No, Elphinston, no," the Prince replied. "As I said but now, the day is past for services to be rendered to me or my cause. That cause is lost; this is the last blow. When France joins hands with England, how can a Stuart hope? Farewell, Captain Elphinston; she whom you love--I know all!--will recover yet, ill as she is, I hope. I pray to God that He may bless you both. ”

“ Still his eyes sought ever the hands of the clock as moment after moment went by and his wife failed to come, until at last he was wrought to so high a pitch of nervousness that he started at any sound inside and outside of the house. A man bawling the news in the street or blowing the horn, which at that time the newsboys carried to proclaim their approach, set his nerves and fibres tingling; the laughter of some of the domestics in the kitchens below him had an equally jarring effect, and when aloud knock came at the street door he quivered as though the avenging Elphinston was indeed there. ”

“ Fordingbridge hinted as much to me ere he set out. Kitty," and now his voice sank to a whisper that none but she could have heard, even though in the room, "is he in London?"
"Yes," she whispered also, softly as a woman's whisper ever is. "Yes. He is here. Oh, father! for the love of God, betray us--him--no more. For if you do, it will not end this time with broken hearts, but with death." ”

“ Come, Fane."
When both had left the cabin Lord Fordingbridge turned to his wife who still sat, as she had done from the beginning of Mr. Archibald's remarks, indifferent and motionless as though in no way interested in what had passed, and exclaimed:
"You hear, madam, the circumstances in which I return to my own. 'Tis not too agreeable, I protest. We are Roman Catholics, yet we come as Protestants, Jacobites, yet under the garb and mask of Hanoverians. And in our train a Jesuit priest, arch-plotter, and schemer, who passes as a respectable Scotch merchant. A sorry home coming, indeed!" ”

“ The Bastille is not a prison, as the canaille think; is not Bicêtre nor even Vincennes; it is a place where gentlemen are simply detained at the pleasure of his Majesty, and when they go forth they go unstained. If you will remember that, Monsieur le Capitaine," he continued with increased sweetness of voice, "you will, I think, repine less at our hospitality."
Bertie bowed, as, indeed, he could not but do to such extreme politeness, no matter how much he resented his incarceration, then he said:
"Sir, I am obliged to you for your civility. ”

“ And they distributed themselves about the Croix Blanche, as, indeed, they were doing in every other hostelry in Amiens, and laughed and shrieked and howled and cursed as they sought their beds in the straw or the garrets, and turned the ancient city into a veritable pandemonium.
"I will walk with you a part of the way," said Douglas to his brother and Bertie as they rose to depart. "This narrow street is hot and stuffy, especially with the fumes that arise from the revellers below. The night air will be cool and refreshing before sleep." ”

“ At once the Jesuit's clear mind grasped the facts--at once he perceived that the murderer had been cleansing his soul before a confessor--and thought that he was that confessor.
"I told you all," Fordingbridge went on, "all, all. And you absolved me, pardoned me, though the punishment you meted out to me was hard. Have you not vengeance enough? To go forth a beggar and an outcast--to wander in savage lands until I die--surely, surely, that is enough. Let me go in peace."
"Not yet," Archibald Sholto answered; "not yet." ”

“ After that all hope was given up of discovering who had murdered Douglas. From the first, from the moment Bertie saw the jewels taken from the two vagabonds by the sergeant, he felt that neither of them were the culprits. Yet, all asked each other whenever they met, "If not these scoundrels, who then?"
"He had no enemy in France, in the world," said Bertie, as they sat one night in the lodgings which Kate had hired for her father and herself. "Why, why should any creature have taken his life? In his regiment he was most popular--nay, beloved. Oh! oh! ”

“ A Church which, he knew--had reason enough to know--was sufficiently powerful to resent any affront to it; a Church which--though the Inquisition had no foothold in France--could make its vengeance felt. And he remembered he had bound himself to that Church by many oaths to further the Stuart cause in England, and had ended by denouncing three of its most active partisans! No need for Elphinston to force him to fight; no need for the Jacobites to take vengeance on him for his treachery; Archibald Sholto would see that the punishment was accorded. ”

“ One other had, however, to be taken a sad farewell of--one whom there was no likelihood of their ever meeting again in this world--the unhappy Genevese, Falmy. At daybreak Bertie was at the window looking for him, and a few moments later he appeared at his; and the tears streamed down the former's eyes so as almost to blind him as for the last time he sent his message across to the opposite tower. "Farewell! I leave with De Chevagny," he signalled. "God ever bless you, and may He at last release you! Is there no message for anyone outside?" ”