the fair Beatrix return to it. I will not have your
hospitality at the expense of the freedom of that fair creature."

This harangue was uttered with rapid gesticulation such as the French
use, and in the language of that nation. The Prince striding up and down
the room; his face flushed, and his hands trembling with anger. He was
very thin and frail from repeated illness and a life of pleasure. Either
Castlewood or Esmond could have broke him across their knee, and in
half a minute's struggle put an end to him; and here he was insulting
us both, and scarce deigning to hide from the two, whose honor it most
concerned, the passion he felt for the young lady of our family. My Lord
Castlewood replied to the Prince's tirade very nobly and simply.

"Sir," says he, "your Royal Highness is pleased to forget that others
risk their lives, and for your cause. Very few Englishmen, please God,
would dare to lay hands on your sacred person, though none would ever
think of respecting ours. Our family's lives are at your service, and
everything we have except our honor."

"Honor! bah, sir, who ever thought of hurting your honor?" says the
Prince with a peevish air.

"We implore your Royal Highness never to think of hurting it," says Lord
Castlewood with a low bow. The night being warm, the windows were open
both towards the Gardens and the Square. Colonel Esmond heard through
the closed door the voice of the watchman calling the hour, in the
square on the other side. He opened the door communicating with the
Prince's room; Martin, the servant that had rode with Beatrix to
Hounslow, was just going out of the chamber as Esmond entered it, and
when the fellow was gone, and the watchman again sang his cry of "Past
ten o'clock, and a starlight night," Esmond spoke to the Prince in a low
voice, and said--"Your Royal Highness hears that man."

"Apres, Monsieur?" says the Prince.

"I have but to beckon him from the window, and send him fifty yards, and
he returns with a guard of men, and I deliver up to him the body of the
person calling himself James the Third, for whose capture Parliament
hath offered a reward of 500L., as your Royal Highness saw on our ride
from Rochester. I have but to say the word, and, by the heaven that made
me, I would say it if I thought the Prince, for his honor's sake, would
not desist from insulting ours. But the first gentleman of England knows
his duty too well to forget himself with the humblest, or peril