used between them during the whole conversation, "were it
not better for you to retire to rest? You spoil your complexion, you
impair your beauty, by these long vigils."
"Beauty!" she said, with something of a scoff. "But why should I
retire, as you call it, to rest, Plessis? You mean to say, retire to
think more deeply still, in darkness as well as in solitude."
"Madam," replied Plessis, "you take these things too heavily. But the
truth is, I have a fair company coming here, by whom you might not
well like to be seen. Far be it from me, if you think otherwise, to
disturb you in possession of the apartments. But they come here at
midnight to consult, it would seem, upon business of importance;
whereof I know nothing, indeed, but which I know requires secrecy and
care."
"Business of importance!" said the lady, somewhat scornfully--"to seat
a bigoted dotard on the throne of England! That is what they come to
consult about. Are they not some of those whom I saw yesterday
morning from the window? that dark Sir George Barkley, who used to
walk through the halls of St. Germain's, in gloomy silence, till the
profane courtiers called him the shadow of the cloud? and that
sanguinary Charnock, whom I once heard conferring with the banished
queen, and vowing that there was no way but one of dealing with
usurpers, and that was by the dagger? If these are your guests,
Plessis, I know the business that they come for full well."
"I neither know, beautiful lady," replied Plessis, "nor do I seek to
know. So pray tell me nothing thereof. Many a grown man in his day
has been hanged for knowing too much, and nobody but a schoolboy was
ever punished for knowing too little. These gentlemen come about
their own business. I meddle not with it; and I must not shame my
hospitality so much as to say, 'Good gentlemen, you shall not meet at
my house!'"
"You are a wise and prudent man, Plessis," replied the lady: "bid the
girl take a light to my chamber; I will go there and muse--not that I
fear their seeing me; but the Lady Helen, perhaps, might wish it
otherwise."
With a bow down to the very ground, Plessis retired, and the lady
paused for a minute or two longer, leaning upon a small table in the
middle of the room, and apparently thinking over what had passed.
"It is a strange thing," she said to herself, after a moment, "a most
strange thing, that the customs of the world, and what we call
honour, so often requires us to do those things that every principle
of right and