ng what should
ensue. What mattered how much or how little had passed between the prince
and the poor faithless girl? They were arrived in time perhaps to rescue
her person, but not her mind; had she not instigated the young prince to
come to her; suborned servants, dismissed others, so that she might
communicate with him? The treacherous heart within her had surrendered,
though the place was safe; and it was to win this that he had given a
life's struggle and devotion; this, that she was ready to give away for
the bribe of a coronet or a wink of the prince's eye.

When he had thought his thoughts out he shook up poor Frank from his
sleep, who rose yawning, and said he had been dreaming of Clotilda. "You
must back me," says Esmond, "in what I am going to do. I have been
thinking that yonder scoundrel may have been instructed to tell that
story, and that the whole of it may be a lie; if it be, we shall find it
out from the gentleman who is asleep yonder. See if the door leading to my
lady's rooms" (so we called the rooms at the north-west angle of the
house), "see if the door is barred as he saith." We tried; it was indeed
as the lackey had said, closed within.

"It may have been open and shut afterwards," says poor Esmond; "the
foundress of our family let our ancestor in that way."

"What will you do, Harry, if--if what that fellow saith should turn out
untrue?" The young man looked scared and frightened into his kinsman's
face; I dare say it wore no very pleasant expression.

"Let us first go see whether the two stories agree," says Esmond; and went
in at the passage and opened the door into what had been his own chamber
now for wellnigh five-and-twenty years. A candle was still burning, and
the prince asleep dressed on the bed--Esmond did not care for making a
noise. The prince started up in his bed, seeing two men in his chamber:
"_Qui est la?_" says he, and took a pistol from under his pillow.

"It is the Marquis of Esmond," says the colonel, "come to welcome his
Majesty to his house of Castlewood, and to report of what hath happened in
London. Pursuant to the king's orders, I passed the night before last,
after leaving his Majesty, in waiting upon the friends of the king. It is
a pity that his Majesty's desire to see the country and to visit our poor
house should have caused the king to quit London without notice yesterday,
when the opportunity happened which in all human probability may not occur
again; and ha