“Has your lordship anything to say,” says the Prince, turning to Frank Castlewood, and quite pale with anger; “any threat or any insult, with which you would like to end this agreeable night’s entertainment?”
“I follow the head of our house,” says Castlewood, bowing gravely. “At what time shall it please the Prince that we should wait upon him in the morning?”
“You will wait on the Bishop of Rochester early, you will bid him bring his coach hither; and prepare an apartment for me in his own house, or in a place of safety. The King will reward you handsomely, never fear, for all you have done in his behalf. I wish you a good night, and shall go to bed, unless it pleases the Marquis of Esmond to call his colleague, the watchman, and that I should pass the night with the Kensington guard. Fare you well, be sure I will remember you. My Lord Castlewood, I can go to bed tonight without need of a chamberlain.” And the Prince dismissed us with a grim bow, locking one door as he spoke, that into the supping-room, and the other through which we passed, after us. It led into the small chamber which Frank Castlewood or Monsieur Baptiste occupied, and by which Martin entered when Colonel Esmond but now saw him in the chamber.
At an early hour next morning the Bishop arrived, and was closeted for some time with his master in his own apartment, where the Prince laid open to his counsellor the wrongs which, according to his version, he had received from the gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favorite; and he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond Ministry was at an end.
“I have soothed your guest,” says he, coming out to the two gentlemen and the widow; who had been made acquainted with somewhat of the dispute of the night before. (By the version we gave her, the Prince was only made to exhibit anger because we doubted of his intentions in respect to Beatrix; and to leave us, because we questioned his honor.) “But I think, all things considered, ’tis as well he should leave this house; and then, my Lady Castlewood,” says the Bishop, “my pretty Beatrix may come back to it.”
“She is quite as well at home at Castlewood,” Esmond’s mistress said, “till everything is over.”
“You shall have your title, Esmond, that I promise you,” says the good Bishop, assuming the airs of a Prime Minister. “The Prince hath expressed himself most nobly in regard of the little difference of last night, and I promise you he hath listened to my sermon, as well as to that of other folks,” says the Doctor, archly; “he hath every great and generous quality, with perhaps a weakness for the sex which belongs to his family, and hath been known in scores of popular sovereigns from King David downwards.”
“My lord, my lord!” breaks out Lady Esmond, “the levity with which you speak of such conduct towards our sex shocks me, and what you call weakness I call deplorable sin.”
“Sin it is, my dear creature,” says the Bishop, with a shrug, taking snuff; “but consider what a sinner King Solomon was, and in spite of a thousand of wives too.”
“Enough of this, my lord,” says Lady Castlewood, with a fine blush, and walked out of the room very stately.
The Prince entered it presently with a smile on his face, and if he felt any offence against us on the previous night, at present exhibited none. He offered a hand to each gentleman with great courtesy. “If all your bishops preach so well as Doctor Atterbury.” says he, “I don’t know, gentlemen, what may happen to me. I spoke very hastily, my lords, last night, and ask pardon of both of you. But I must not stay any longer,” says he, “giving umbrage to good friends, or keeping pretty girls away from their homes. My Lord Bishop hath found a safe place for me, hard by at a curate’s house, whom the Bishop can trust, and whose wife is so ugly as to be beyond all danger; we will decamp into those new quarters, and I leave you, thanking you for a hundred kindnesses here. Where is my hostess, that I may bid her farewell; to welcome her in a house of my own, soon, I trust, where my friends shall have no cause to quarrel with me.”
Lady Castlewood arrived presently, blushing with great grace, and tears filling her eyes as the Prince graciously saluted her. She looked so charming and young, that the doctor, in his bantering way, could not help speaking of her beauty to the Prince; whose compliment made her blush, and look more charming still.
XII
A Great Scheme, and Who Balked It
As characters written with a secret ink come out with the application of fire, and disappear again and leave the paper white, as soon as it is cool; a hundred names of men, high in repute and favoring the Prince’s cause, that were writ in our private lists, would have been visible enough on the great roll of the conspiracy, had it ever been laid open under the sun. What crowds would have pressed forward, and subscribed their names and protested their loyalty, when
