ed to the unwitting
services of the Vicomte, who had successively helped me on to nearly
every advance in her affections.

From the Hague we journeyed by easy stages to Paris, where Lady
Jane found suitable lodgings for herself and Margaret in the rue
Dauphine, while I found a humble one, better fitted to my purse,
in the rue du Petit-Bourbon.

I at once made application to join my old regiment, but to my
chagrin I was only put off from month to month, and, insisting on
an answer, I was curtly informed there was no captaincy vacant,
and I must remain satisfied with the small pension the king was
pleased to give me as officer in the Scottish expedition, or accept
a subaltern's position.

When the Vicomte arrived, by the end of May, he resumed his position
in the Royal Guard, and his evening visits to Lady Jane, or rather
to Margaret. About the middle of the summer he succeeded in obtaining
an authentic copy of the Act of Indemnity, which was studied with
the greatest interest by us all. The terms were fair, even generous,
but I was not astonished to find my name among those excluded from
its favour. It mattered little to me that I was henceforward a
marked man, with a price on my head, doomed to perpetual banishment;
for, being in no sense an Englishman, and a Scot only by descent,
exclusion from the Three Kingdoms meant little to me; blood and
training had made me an alien in feeling, and fate had ever thrown
me and mine on the side of the unfortunate; Maxwells and Geraldines,
we had always been on the losing side; it had become second nature.
But with Margaret it was far different. Her generous soul was in
arms at once; my exclusion from the Act had raised me to the niche
of a hero in her temple, and again it was the Vicomte who had
contributed to this elevation.

Margaret now began to grow anxious again concerning her brother.
Why did he not join us? Could any new complication have arisen to
cause his re-arrest? These and a thousand other disturbing
speculations troubled her unceasingly, until they were put beyond
all doubt by a letter, which fell upon us like a bomb:

"_January_ 19, 1748.

"My dearest Peggy,--I have resolved on a step which I can scarce
expect you to approve, perhaps not even to understand at present,
though I have every hope that some day you will do both.

"My situation briefly is this: I have no hope whatever of another
effectual attempt on the part of the Prince, and I