he troops as though she suspected nothing, and
that her chamber was the best place wherein to await them. So her black
japan casket which Harry was to carry to the coach was taken back to her
ladyship's chamber, whither the maid and mistress retired. Victoire came
out presently, bidding the page to say her ladyship was ill, confined to
her bed with the rheumatism.

By this time the soldiers had reached Castlewood. Harry Esmond saw them
from the window of the tapestry parlour; a couple of sentinels were posted
at the gate--a half-dozen more walked towards the stable; and some others,
preceded by their commander, and a man in black, a lawyer probably, were
conducted by one of the servants to the stair leading up to the part of
the house which my lord and lady inhabited.

So the captain, a handsome kind man, and the lawyer, came through the
ante-room to the tapestry parlour, and where now was nobody but young
Harry Esmond, the page.

"Tell your mistress, little man," says the captain kindly, "that we must
speak to her."

"My mistress is ill abed," said the page.

"What complaint has she?" asked the captain.

The boy said, "the rheumatism!"

"Rheumatism! that's a sad complaint," continues the good-natured captain;
"and the coach is in the yard to fetch the doctor, I suppose?"

"I don't know," says the boy.

"And how long has her ladyship been ill?"

"I don't know," says the boy.

"When did my lord go away?"

"Yesterday night."

"With Father Holt?"

"With Mr. Holt."

"And which way did they travel?" asks the lawyer.

"They travelled without me," says the page.

"We must see Lady Castlewood."

"I have orders that nobody goes in to her ladyship--she is sick," says the
page; but at this moment Victoire came out. "Hush!" says she; and, as if
not knowing that any one was near, "What's this noise?" says she. "Is this
gentleman the doctor?"

"Stuff! we must see Lady Castlewood," says the lawyer, pushing by.

The curtains of her ladyship's room were down, and the chamber dark, and
she was in bed with a nightcap on her head, and propped up by her pillows,
looking none the less ghastly because of the red which was still on her
cheeks, and which she could not afford to forgo.

"Is that the doctor?" she said.

"There is no use with this deception, madam," Captain Westbury said (for
so he was named). "My duty is to arrest the person of Thomas, Viscount
Castlewood, a nonjuring peer--of Robert Tusher, Vicar of