do
believe he forgets his enmities more easily than he does his
friendships. If we could have said the same of the race of Stuart,
the crown of England would never have rested on the brow of the
Prince of Orange. I thought to have led you to other scenes and other
conferences to-night," he added, "but this matter changes all, and we
will now part. I will to my task, and prepare the way for to-morrow.
You to yours; but fail not, Wilton, fail not. Be rather before than
after the hour."
"I will not fail," replied Wilton; and after this short conference,
he turned his rein and rode back to London.
As he went, he meditated on the hopes which his conference with Green
had raised up again; but the brightness of those hopes faded away
beneath the light of thought. Yet, though such was the case, the
determination remained, and grew firmer and stronger, perhaps from
the want of any very great expectation. He determined to appeal to
the King, as the last act in his power; to do so firmly and
resolutely; and if the King refused his petition, and gave him no
reason to hope, to apply, as the next greatest favour, for a
memorandum in writing of his having so appealed, in order that he
might prove to Laura and her father that he had done all in his power
to give the Duke an opportunity of rejecting that means of escape,
which could only be obtained by uniting his daughter to one, from
whom, in any other circumstances, he would have withheld her.
"It is strange," he said to himself, "it is strange and sad, that I
can scarcely move a step in any way without the risk of dishonour;
and that the only means to avoid it requires every exertion to
deprive myself of peace, and happiness, and love for ever."
Thus he thought as he went along; and imagination pictured his next
parting from her he loved, and all that was to follow it--the grief
that she would suffer as well as himself--the long dreary lapse of
sad and cheerless hours that was to fill up the remainder of
existence for him, with all happy hopes at an end, and fortune,
station, love, gone away like visions of the night.
Early on the ensuing morning, he despatched a note to the Tower,
telling Laura that business, affecting her father's safety, would
keep him away from her at the hour he had promised to visit her. He
would be with her, he said, at all events before nightfall; and he
added every term of love and affection that his heart suggested; but
at the same time he could not prevent a tone of sadness spreading
t