Maggie could see nothing from her perch but the sea, and the opposite cliff upon which Ripon House stood. A few wheeling sea-gulls, and a small fishing-boat, beating out of the harbor, were the only living objects in the view. The waves, crest over crest, hurried toward the headland, and beat into foam at her feet. Her mind was soothed by watching the torn waters, as each wave dashed out its life, in a thousand swirls and white bubbles of foam.

Suddenly she was startled from her reverie by hearing Geoffrey call her name, and she saw him on the rocks below her.

He looked more than pleased at getting so good a chance to see her alone.

"Ah, Lord Brompton," she said, coldly, looking at him, but not inviting him to come up by her. "What has brought you out here?"

"You. I was on my way to make a call upon you, and just as I reached the top of the cliff I saw you on the beach, talking with a fisherman. May I come up to you?"

Maggie glanced down at him, and saw that he was dressed with more than ordinary care; in spite of her hard feelings toward him she could not help smiling at the thought that he had been prinking all the morning to look well when he came courting.

Geoffrey saw her smile, and started to climb up to her side.

"There is not room up here for two, I am afraid," she said in a determined voice.

"I will sit on the sharpest edge of the rock," pleaded Geoffrey.

"It would make me uncomfortable to see you suffer, just as it would to see anything in pain," she added hastily. "What did it matter to her," she thought, "whether Lord Brompton suffered or not?"

"I would not suffer when I am near you," said Geoffrey, a little plaintively, wondering why he was treated so badly.

"If you came you would not be more entertaining than Heine, would you?" asked Maggie, looking mockingly down into his gray eyes.

"Damn Heine," thought Geoffrey, as he lifted himself up over the rocks. Miss Windsor huddled herself far into a corner of the niche. There was plenty of room for two there after all; yet Geoffrey seated himself in a most uncomfortable attitude, with his stick over his knees, and looked earnestly at her.

"He has come after the stocks and bonds," said Maggie to herself, as she steeled her heart against his winning face and his manly simplicity of manner. She tried to say something about the sea and the view, but he looked at her earnestly, and said, in a low, hurried voice:

"Miss Windsor, I have sought you out to-day with a definite purpose. I sincerely hope that you were not displeased at seeing me. You know why I wish to see you."

Maggie turned away her head; there was a sincere ring to his voice; could it be possible that he really cared for her, loved her, Maggie Windsor? Ah, no; she remembered Mrs. Carey, and said nothing.

"Miss Windsor—Maggie," he said, "I know that I have no right to ask you to marry me, save that I love you with a single heart."

"Oh, Mr. Doubleface," she thought, "how fair you talk!" She still said nothing, but tapped the stone in front of her nervously with the end of her little boot.

"I have nothing to offer you," continued Geoffrey, "except my love and my name; I do not even know whether I even have a life to give you."

Maggie was startled by this; she did not understand it at all. Geoffrey waited for her to say something, and there was a depressing pause for a moment.

She felt that she had grown pale, and her fingers twitched convulsively at the handle of her parasol. Here was her lover saying to her all that she had dreamed he might say, saying in an earnest, trembling voice that he loved her; in a voice so different to his customary tone of banter, that she for a moment almost believed in his sincerity; yet as she averted her face and looked over the bay she could see clearly in her mind's eye the little picture which had remained in it from yesterday—her lover holding Mrs. Carey in his arms.

"Lord Brompton," she finally said, in a slow, deliberate voice, from which all passion, even all affection was wanting, "I am sorry that you have spoken to me in this way, very sorry."

Poor Geoffrey had expected a different answer, and as he sat there looking at Maggie's pale, agitated face, he felt that there was a wall between them, where he had always found a kindly sympathy and an affectionate interest before. He had expected, perhaps, that she might not care about him enough to marry him, for he was not so young or conceited as to imagine that the priceless treasure of a woman's heart is to be lightly won at the first asking, but he had thought that his sweetheart would sympathize with him at his loss of her; with the touching pity which at such times is so akin to love and often its forerunner. Still he boldly went on with his declaration, feeling that he did not wish to leave a word unsaid of all that had swelled his heart with love and hope. If his love were all poured out and spurned, would not the chambers of his heart be swept and garnished for the future?

Yet what a desolate, haunted chamber it will be, he bitterly thought.

"I could not have told you a week ago that I loved you, Maggie," he said. "But I did, though; only I did not know it. I must have loved you since the day I first met you at the ball. You remember it, do you not? When you first smiled at me I felt that we had always known each other; and that evening I was content. Will you make me so for all my life?" He leaned over toward her and tried to take one of her hands; she edged it away from him, and turned toward him with flashing eyes and thin, compressed lips.

"It is not possible that I shall ever care for you, Lord Brompton, in the way in which you pretend to care for me."

"Pretend to care for you!" he said, angrily. "What do you mean by that? Why should I come to you with pretences? What should I gain by making a lying love to you?"

"Everything," she answered, coldly.

"I do not care to argue this, Miss Windsor," he said, turning his face away, pained to the heart. "I am in such a position that I may not; but I wished, while I had a chance, to tell you that I loved you. Good-by, Maggie, good-by. I do not wish to be melodramatic; but you may never see me again."

He kissed one of her hands, which lay at her side, and lifting himself from the rock, climbed down the cliff, a mist of tears before his eyes; and Maggie sat looking over the bay silent and sad, trying to reconcile the evident genuineness of Geoffrey's entreaty with what she knew of him.

Late that evening Mary Lincoln was sitting in her bedroom, in an arm-chair by the fire. Her thoughts were of Sir John Dacre.

In him she saw the hero of whom she had dreamed during her girlhood; the young prince clad in golden armor, and in quest of adventures and opportunities for self-sacrifice, who should awake her sleeping heart with a kiss.

The ordinary warm-hearted but pleasure-loving and easy-going man cannot stir the depths of a nature like Mary Lincoln's. An earnest, ardent spirit, even if it be Quixotic, so that it see before it, like a clear flame, some duty to be done, or some war to be waged, attracts to it the devotion of a strong woman's heart.

Women love adventurous, single-minded men, and will die for them, if need be, gladly and silently; but such men, intent on their object, seem oblivious to the wealth of love that might be theirs for the asking, were they not too absorbed to ask for it. And so it was with John Dacre and Mary Lincoln. He was drawn to her unconsciously by her lovely womanhood; but his great dream seemed to fill his mind, and that fulfilled, the world had nothing in store for him. He wished no rewards, no life for himself, but to see his King returned and Great Britain proud among the nations; yet he liked to sit by Mary Lincoln and ponder his cherished dream.

Of course he would not speak to her of it; he knew the danger of his project; yet she read his heart and knew that he was deep in some adventure which filled his life so that she had no part in it. Still, she saw that she attracted him, even if he did not know it, and they talked together about the glories of the past history of their country, and lived with the great men who, with brain, and sword, and pen had wrought for the honor and fame of their native land.

It was no courtship, no wooing, only a meeting, for a brief space, of two human beings who had been made for each other, but whom fate separated by a rift which could not be bridged. Mary Lincoln knew this, John Dacre did not; but as he had bade her good-night just before, he felt a sadness steal over his heart, and his voice had trembled as he spoke. Even into the heart of this man of one idea, on the eve of this dangerous conspiracy, all unawares the love god had stolen with muffled feet, so that he did not know his presence. But Mary knew.

There was a little tap at the door, and she heard Maggie Windsor's voice asking:

"May I come in?"

Mary arose quickly and unbolted the door, and Maggie Windsor entered.

"You will excuse me for disturbing you, will you not?" asked Maggie, whose eyes were red with weeping, and whose hair had a dishevelled look, as if it had been buried deep in a pillow. "But I felt so lonely and troubled to-night that I have come to talk to you."

Mary leaned over and kissed her with tenderness. "My dear Miss Windsor," she said, "I am touched that you should come to me."

"Oh, please do not call me Miss Windsor, call me Maggie: I cannot tell you anything if you call me Miss Windsor. You know I never had a mother; and there are some things which a girl must tell to some one."

"Maggie, dear," said Mary gently, "tell me everything. It will ease your mind, even if I cannot help you in any way."

"You cannot help me; no one can help me," sobbed Maggie, as her friend put her arm around her waist, and gently stroked her hair. "It is only that I love him so, and he is unworthy of it."

"Do you mean Geoffrey Ripon?" asked Mary.

"Yes, yes."

"Geoffrey Ripon unworthy of a woman's love!" exclaimed Mary. "That cannot be. John Dacre—" She blushed and turned away her face, that Maggie might not see her as she spoke his name. "John Dacre says that he is the soul of honor and his life-long friend."

"Oh! men have such different ideas of honor from ours," exclaimed Maggie. Then she told her friend in broken speech of her love for Geoffrey; that she had supposed that he had not told her he loved her because he felt that he had nothing to offer her; that she had come to England to see him again; and then she told of the dreadful scene in Chichester, and how she had coldly rejected him in the morning because she believed he loved Eleanor Carey, and that he wished to marry for money.

The story seemed shameful to her as she told it: her forwardness in coming to England, and her shattered faith in her lover.

"And yet he seemed in earnest this morning, and he appeared to love me," she said to Mary, when she had told her story, "and when I told him, when he asked me what he had to gain by a pretence of loving me, that he had everything to gain, his face was deadly white and his eyes were filled with tears. Oh, I almost believed in him then, and I should have relented; I fear I should have been weak enough to have relented if he had not left me; and now it is all over!"

She burst into tears, and Mary's face was full of sympathy, as she whispered words of comfort in the unhappy girl's ear.

"I own that appearances are against him," she urged, "but they may be explained away. Mrs. Carey is a very dangerous and bad woman; at the moment when Geoffrey appeared to you the worst he may have loved you the most. Have heart, dear, if he loves you, and if he is a good and true man, as I think he must be, for John Dacre trusts him—"

Maggie raised her head, looked into her friend's eyes and read her secret. Then two hands clasped together tightly, and they kissed and wept together.

"You will see him again," whispered Mary, as Maggie was leaving the room. "You will see him soon, and everything will be right."

"No, I am afraid everything will not," said Maggie; "but if I have lost a lover, I have found a friend, have I not?"

And they did not meet soon again, for Geoffrey was dispatched by Dacre upon most important duty—to make arrangements for the concealment of the King when he should arrive in the country to return to his own again. He went into the enterprise heart and soul; that is to say, with that part of his heart which was left him. Still he feared the end of the affair, and seemed to foresee the ruin to which the troubled waters in which he swam were sweeping the King's men.



CHAPTER X.

KING GEORGE THE FIFTH.

England was at peace; but it was the lurid peace before the storm. All men knew that the days were hurrying on toward an outbreak. In what shape it should come no one knew, and the mystery deepened the sensation of expectancy and dread.

It had been publicly spoken, in the street, the press, and even in Parliament, that the Royalists were conspiring for a revolution; and this certainty had sunk deep into the hearts of the people. Their silence was ominous; the Royalists looked upon it as favorable.

But there were Englishmen who knew their countrymen better, and who foreboded darkly, though without fear, of the end; and among these was Richard Lincoln. His heart beat with the popular pulsation, and he knew that there could be but one outcome to such a blind and reckless enterprise.

Mary Lincoln alone perceived how deep was the trouble in her father's soul as those surcharged hours went reeling past. Deep beyond even his trouble was her own, for though she had not confessed it even to herself, every hope of her life was bound up in the destinies of the Royalist conspiracy.

On the afternoon of November 23d there was an early adjournment of Parliament, and her father came home more depressed than she had ever seen him. Her heart grew cold in the unusual silence.

Mary waited for her father to speak, but the evening wore on, and he had only tried to lead her to every-day subjects.

"Father," she said at last, "there is depressing news. What has happened? Will you not tell me?"

"Yes, there is sad news, dear—gloomy news for some. Those madmen will attempt a revolution by civil war within the next twenty-four hours."

"It is known?"

"Yes, it is all known—and all prepared for."

Mary's face changed as if a white light had fallen on it; her pitiful excitement was evident in the quivering lips and restless hands. She would have cried out in her grief and pity had she been alone; but her father's strength, so close to her, made her strong and patient.

"If it is known," she said, with forced calmness, "surely it will be stopped without bloodshed? They will arrest those gentlemen before they go too far."

Had her father looked into the eyes that spoke more than the lips he might have read beyond the words. But his mind was preoccupied.

"Bloodshed might be avoided by their arrest," he said, sadly; "but the evil would only be postponed, not eradicated. The conspirators have entered the rapids: they will be allowed to go over the falls."

"Oh, father!" whispered Mary, standing beside him and holding his arm, "can they not be warned?"

Richard Lincoln, startled from his own brooding by this astounding question from his daughter, turned, almost sternly, to speak of the righteous doom of traitors, but he did not say the words. At last he saw what a less observant eye might have seen long before—the suffering and fear in her eyes, and the lines which concealed anxiety had drawn on his daughter's face. Without a word she came into his arms and lay upon his breast and sobbed, and no word was needed that was not spoken in the father's gentle hand on her dear head.

The hours of the afternoon went slowly by, and Richard Lincoln was glad to look forward to an unusual evening as the best means of diverting Mary's mind from the subject which filled it. At seven o'clock a great public meeting was to be held in Cobden Square. The platform for the speakers happened to be built beneath the windows of Mr. Windsor's city house, and the hospitable American, who was to depart next morning for his own country, had invited a large party to hear the speeches.

Mary was glad when her father told her that he wished her to go with him, for Maggie Windsor was the only one who knew her secret. As she drove with her father into the square in the evening, the place was bright as mid-day with electric lights. The crowd was already gathering, and the people were strangely silent.

At Mr. Windsor's there was a large party, and among the guests many of those whom Mary had met at Ripon House.

It was almost a merry gathering. The genial American gentleman and his charming daughter had conquered even the austerity of the Duchess of Bayswater; and the Duke conversed with Mr. Sydney, swaying his gold eyeglass on its string with gracious abandon.

Geoffrey Ripon and Featherstone, who were together, saw Mr. Lincoln and Mary as soon as they entered.

"Geoffrey," said Featherstone, in a bantering whisper, "behold our deadly enemy. Do you dare to speak to him?"

"I should rather not," answered Geoffrey, "but I suppose we must. Heavens! How pale his daughter is!"

"Come, Ripon. Mr. Lincoln sees us. Here goes to shake hands with the man whom we must send to prison to-morrow—if he don't send us."

Geoffrey Ripon felt more like a truant schoolboy approaching a severe master than he cared to confess even to himself, as he moved through the crowded room toward Richard Lincoln. But when they met there was nothing in the manner of either to indicate any unusual feeling.

Mary Lincoln stood near a window, from which she looked over the still silent but now dense crowd in the square. While she mentally contrasted the two scenes, that within with that without, she turned her head with the consciousness of being observed, and met the quiet eyes of Sir John Dacre, who bowed without a smile.

Mary's strong impulse was to warn him of his danger, at any cost to herself, and she had taken a step toward him, when she was intercepted by Mrs. Oswald Carey. The Beauty was splendidly dressed, and a deep excitement blazed in her eyes.

"We have kept places for you, Miss Windsor and I," said she, with gay kindliness. "Is your father going to speak to-night?"

"I think not," answered Mary, her old aversion for Mrs. Carey doubled on the instant.

"Then we shall take him too. Shall we go and find him?"

Dacre was still standing by the window, and Mary Lincoln, thinking to bring him to her, asked him if the meeting had opened.

"Not yet," he said, from his corner; "but they are crowding the platform with speakers."

He would have gone to Miss Lincoln, whose earnest nature, as well as her beautiful face, had impressed the single-minded Royalist perhaps more deeply than anything outside the King's own cause. But he did not move, because of his dislike for Mrs. Oswald Carey, founded somewhat on an instinctive doubt of her honesty.

Mrs. Oswald Carey, glancing from Mary's face to Dacre's, quietly resolved to keep these two from coming together that evening if she could prevent it. She now urged Mary to take her to her father while she "delivered Miss Windsor's message," a word adopted on the moment; and Mary had to go with her.

Meanwhile the meeting in the square had opened, and the voices of the speakers were clearly heard in the drawing-room. It would have been a scene of singularly oppressive character even to a heedless observer; but its unexpressed and perhaps unconscious purport was deeply read by many of those who listened from the balcony and parlors of Mr. Windsor's house.

Now and then came from the vast field of faces in the square a rumbling roar that swelled and died like thunder; and then came the single voice of a speaker, stretched like a thin wire, joining roar to roar. All through the proceedings there was never a laugh from the multitude.

"Listen!" cried Colonel Featherstone from the balcony, late in the night; "here is a dramatic fellow."

The man then addressing the crowd was one who had from his first sentence moved his audience to an extraordinary degree—one of those magnetic voices of the people which flames the word that is smouldering in every heart. He had used no cloak for his meaning, like the other speakers; but boldly attacked the Legitimists, the Monarchy, the titles and the privileges of the aristocracy.

"These are things of the past, and not of the future!" sounded from the deep voice. "The England of to-morrow shall have no aristocracy but her wisest and her best, shall have no hereditary rights but the equal right of every Englishman!"

Here followed the thunderous approval of the multitude.

"Listen!" again cried Featherstone from his advanced place on the balcony. "Listen!"

"Will that crime be attempted?" cried the electric voice of the orator. "Yes! I believe it will be attempted." Then there was a low murmur among the mass, and a changing of feet that made an ominous, scuffling sound. "What then? Then it will be every man's duty to strike down the enemies of the people—to destroy them, so that we and our children shall not be destroyed. We do not appeal to the sword, but the sword is ours, and we can use it terribly. Their blood be upon their own heads who dare to lay their hands on the charter of the people's rights!"

In the wave of tremendous applause that followed these words Mary Lincoln looked at Dacre, who had turned from the window. His face, always severe, was now set in fierce sternness. Again she was on the point of going to him to speak the warning that was burning her heart, but she saw Dacre suddenly draw himself up proudly, as if he had been challenged. She followed his look and saw her father meet Dacre's glance as sword meets sword.

Every line in Richard Lincoln, from bent brow to clenched hand, seemed filled with the meaning of the orator's ominous words.

The two men, standing almost within arm's reach, looked for one earnest moment into each other's eyes and hearts. What might have followed, who can say, had not the engagement been broken from without. Mary Lincoln passed between them, and laying her hand on her father's arm spoke to him, asking to be taken home. The father's eyes fell to the troubled face, and without speaking he went with his daughter.

Mary and her father were hardly missed out of the bright party; but one face became smoother when they had departed—the Beauty's. The gloom of the public meeting brought out the brilliant elements of the gathering with rare effect.

From group to group flashed Mrs. Carey, and her lips and eyes were less eloquent than the clinging touch of her arm, which was almost a caress, as she left or tried to leave her impression of sympathy and admiration on one after another of the Royalists.

Two men she avoided, instinctively and deliberately—Geoffrey Ripon and Sir John Dacre. Calculating, cool, unprincipled as she was, she feared to meet the eyes of these two men, whose very lives she had undermined and sold.

It was eleven o'clock and most of the ladies had gone, when the beautiful woman, attended by Featherstone, drew her soft cloak round her in her carriage and gave her hand, without a glove, to be kissed by the big colonel, bending in the doorway.

"Your driver knows where to go?" asked Featherstone, closing the door.

"Oh, yes; straight home," answered Mrs. Carey, smiling; "good-night."

She lived in a quiet street on the south side of Regent's Park, and thither she went. But when she reached Oxford Street she rang the carriage bell and changed her course.

"Drive to Clapham Common," she said, curtly, "and as fast as you can."

It was a dark night, with a drizzling rain, and as the cab rattled along the empty streets she lay back with closed eyes, evidently thinking of no unpleasant things. It was over five miles to her destination, and more than once on her way her thoughts brought a smile to her lips, and once even an exultant laugh.

On the Battersea side of Clapham Common, in one of those immense old brick houses built in the time of Queen Victoria, with trees and lawns and lodges, lived a man whose name was known in every stock exchange and money market in the world—Benjamin Bugbee, the banker.

From his devotion to the House of Hanover, in its glorious and its gloomy fortunes, and from his intimate business relations with the royal family, Bugbee had received the romantic title of "The King's Banker," a name by which he was recognized even in other countries.

Bugbee was a small, bald-headed, narrow-chinned old man, with an air of preternatural solemnity. From boyhood up, through all the stages of life, he had been noted for the mysterious sobriety of demeanor which now marked him as an angular, slow-moving, silent and unpleasant old man.

The devotion of Bugbee to the House of Hanover was clear enough; but the springs of it were quite unseen until some years later, when they were laid bare by a rigid Parliamentary inquiry. The astonishing truth was that this silent and insignificant old man, since the year of the King's banishment, had controlled with absolute power one of the greatest, if not the greatest, private fortunes ever accumulated in any country—that of the royal exile, who was known to his devoted followers as King George the Fifth.

It is true that the poverty of George, in his residence in the United States, was of world-wide notoriety. The shifts of the "Court" in Boston for very existence, and the extraordinary measures adopted from time to time by royalty to make both ends meet were a scandal in the ears of kings and courtiers everywhere.

Nevertheless, George was one of the richest men in the world—or at least he had been while on the throne, and he would be again should he ever become the reigning monarch of England. The enormous wealth which had begun to accumulate in Victoria's frugal reign had grown like a rolling snowball for over a hundred years. For the latter half century the royal investors had, wisely enough, avoided all national bonds except those of the two old republics, France and America; but in the great cities of the earth, and notably in those that stood the least chance of bombardment or earthquake, the heir of the Hanoverian line was one of the largest owners of real property.

George's royal grandfather was a generous and almost extravagant monarch; but his enormous private wealth was sufficient even for so luxurious a prince. The inheritance which had made his reign stable and pleasant he secured for his son, strictly stipulating that it was to be enjoyed by him or his heir while reigning as monarch of England.

Fatal words these of King Edward's will, for they secured the lifelong poverty of the grandson whose welfare he had at heart. During the few years of George's reign the royal coffers overflowed with gold. Bugbee, the King's banker, was exhaustless as an ocean of wealth.

But the revolution that banished the King and his noblemen, among them those who had been executors with Bugbee of King Edward's will, left the solemn little banker absolute master of the royal fortune—until George or his heir came back to reign as King of England.

For twenty years Mr. Bugbee had been in possession, or rather dominion. The poverty of the royal exile in America was well known to him; but to the demands and petitions of George and his "Court" he turned a deaf ear. His conscience, he answered, would not allow him to touch one penny of the treasure, which could only be legally drawn by a reigning King of England.

In the early years of the King's exile, Bugbee had sent considerable sums to his royal master, which he alleged were from his own purse; but though he had since continued these, the annual amount had been reduced to a beggarly allowance.

Still the old banker was the most trusted agent of the Royalists; and weak George himself regarded with a vague respect, almost like fear, the inflexible integrity which controlled the conscience of this most devoted subject.

Mrs. Oswald Carey did not hear the city clocks, which "clashed and hammered" the midnight hour, as her cab rolled up the tree-lined avenue of the pretentious house of "The King's Banker."

The driver rang the bell; and as the door almost instantly opened, Mrs. Carey, from the cab, saw several men in the wide hall, some sitting and others standing, like men in waiting.

A tall flunkey took the card, closed the door, and Mrs. Oswald Carey had to wait in the cab a full minute. Then the door opened, and down the wide steps of the porch hobbled Mr. Bugbee, with gouty, tender feet, the top of his bald head shining under the lamp.

"I had almost given you up," was his greeting; and as he helped the Beauty from the cab there was an unquestionable welcome in his gratified smile. That they had met before, and intimately, was evident in the manner of the reception. The truth was that Mrs. Oswald Carey and her husband were old connections of the banker, the husband through monetary difficulties and the wife through complications of her own, in which old Bugbee had, for some reason or other, assisted her more than once. She knew that her husband was in the old man's power, but she never pretended to know it. On his side, old Bugbee was a foresighted worker. For years past he had seen that the day of the King's return would come, and for that day he meant to be prepared in more ways than one. In his cunning old brain he had some plan laid away in which he had provided a part for this beautiful and utterly unprincipled woman.

"Am I too late?" asked Mrs. Oswald Carey.

"Only too late for supper," was the dry answer of the old banker, but the tone was pleasant.

Through the hall, where those in waiting stood respectfully as she passed, the banker led her to a small, luxuriously furnished parlor on the ground floor. As she threw aside her wraps and sank into a soft chair, old Bugbee opened the door of an inner room, and turned to her:

"These are your apartments," said he.

The Beauty looked around, but said nothing, only nodding her head.

"You are very tired?" questioned old Bugbee.

"No; not very. But I should like some supper—and a glass of wine."

Mr. Bugbee touched a bell and gave an order.

"It is almost midnight?" she asked.

"It is after twelve—ten minutes. The morning of the great day has come."

And the old banker looked into the eyes of the young Beauty, and almost smiled in response to her low, derisive laugh.

"He came to-day, then?" she asked.

"Yesterday," corrected Mr. Bugbee; "at noon, he landed from my steam-yacht, in the very heart of London. So much for the international police."

"Do they know?" said Mrs. Oswald Carey. "Does Sir John Dacre know?"

"Sir John Dacre helped the King into his carriage when he landed. He knows that he is here, and expects to meet him at Aldershot to-morrow."

While pretending to move and speak as if quite at ease, Mr. Bugbee was obviously nervous and unsettled. Mrs. Carey observed this, but without appearing to do so.

"Where is your husband?" Mr. Bugbee asked quietly, with his face turned from Mrs. Carey, whose side view he had before him in a low mirror. He saw her move in her chair, and slowly look him all over, and then glance down as if considering her answer.

"He is on the Continent—at Nice, I think."

She had dined with him that day, but did not know that from the dinner Oswald Carey had come straight to Mr. Bugbee's house to keep an appointment with the wily "King's Banker," who wished to know how the Beauty had spent the day, and whom she had seen.

"What a liar she is!" muttered old Bugbee, but he smiled at himself in the mirror, as if approving his superior astuteness.

"Then there is no danger of his making a noise about your absence from home to-night. Some husbands would be alarmed, and might apply to the police."

Mrs. Carey looked up to see if Bugbee were serious; and then she laughed heartily and rather loudly, while he held up his hands with an alarmed expression.

"Hush!" and the frown of the old man was something to remember. "They observe as much formality as if he were in Windsor Palace."

"Well—he will be there to-day, will he not?" and Mrs. Carey looked innocently at the banker.

He came closer and bent his broad, bare poll to her as he spoke:

"No! He will never see Windsor again."

"But the Royalists—will they not raise the King's flag to-day?" Still the guileless surprise in her face, which had its effect on old Bugbee.

"Yes; they will strike to-day at Aldershot—and they will be defeated."

"How do you know? Have they not plenty of men?"

"Men? Men are only in the way. They have no money."

"And the King? Will he be taken?"

"He will not be there," and Mr. Bugbee drew close to the Beauty again.

"Where will he be?" she asked.

"Here—with you! You will save him by detaining him."

She sat still, and looked at him with a steady stare. She knew quite well what purpose the old banker had in mind, and what she had come there for. But she meant to play her own game, not Bugbee's.

Her own game was to get the old King under her own influence, whether he went to reign in Windsor or to rust in America. She knew his character well, and she had little doubt of her power if she could only get the reins. From that position she knew enough, too, to overcome all scruples of conscience in the King's conscientious banker.

Bugbee was playing against two possible results—the success of the King or his death. Either was ruin for him. Investigation would follow, whether George were a king or a corpse. So long as he remained in exile the Republicans would never attempt to confiscate the private fortune of the banished monarch; while, on the other hand, the royal exile would not venture to appeal to the courts against his banker, thereby exposing his enormous wealth to the cupidity of the Republicans.

"You have gone too far," said Mrs. Carey, steadily looking at the banker; "I shall do nothing of the kind. My reputation—"

"Shall be quite safe—your husband being at Nice," and old Bugbee's was the guileless face now.

"Humph!"

"No one else will miss you for two days."

"Ah! for two days. And then?"

"Then you go home; you have been visiting your American friends, or any other friends out of London."

"Yes; that is all very well," Mrs. Carey said quietly. "And he—the King?"

"He will return to America at once, leaving this house in two days, when all is quiet, to go on board the steam-yacht which brought him over."

Mrs. Carey said nothing more for nearly a minute.

"Where is that yacht now?" she asked at length.

"In London;" and the old banker dovetailed his fingers and stood with a smile as if ready for all questions.

"And for my services—my assistance in this game of yours—"

"Pardon me," interrupted Bugbee, sententiously, "it is not a game of mine. It is my plan to save the King from certain destruction."

"Well, whatever it is," said Mrs. Oswald Carey, impatiently, "for my part of it I shall have—what?"

"Ten thousand pounds," answered old Bugbee, dropping the words slowly.

"When?"

"When the King is safe—when he is gone. In two days' time."

"That will not do!" and there was a ring of purpose in the Beauty's voice that made the old banker's heart beat quicker, and made him keenly attentive. She repeated: "That will not do! He may not go to America, or he may not remain here. He may be captured, or he may be killed. He may go to Aldershot to-morrow, despite all your plans. You know he intends to go. But I—I shall have risked everything, whether you win or lose, and at your bidding. Oh, no, my dear Mr. Bugbee, it will not do at all."

"What do you want, then?" asked the old man.

"I want the money now, and I want just double the sum you have named."

"You cannot have—"

"Then I shall go home;" and Mrs. Carey rose and began to arrange her cloak, but keeping her eyes on old Bugbee's face. Both were playing for the same stake, though only one knew it. Mrs. Carey read the old banker's purpose, but Bugbee had no idea that she had any outlook beyond the purchase money—twenty instead of ten thousand pounds. He was secretly not displeased at the demand, which seemed an indication of her sincerity.

"You shall have the money," he said, having pretended to consider. "I shall write a check now."

"I want the money; I do not want a check." And she remained standing.

Old Bugbee smiled as he went out. In a few minutes he returned, and finding her still prepared to go, took the cloak from her, and placed in her hand twenty crisp Bank of England notes.

The entrance of the tall flunkey prevented Mrs. Carey from speaking her pleasure, but she looked it at the banker.

"You are wanted, sir," said the erect flunkey.

Old Bugbee hurriedly left the room, and as soon as the door had closed, Mrs. Oswald Carey ran to a large mirror, where she smiled at herself, and concealed her treasure in her dress.

Then she went into the rooms which the old banker had said were hers; and some minutes later, when the banker returned and she came toward him, he smiled approval at the few supreme touches that had made her beauty positively radiant. Her dress was cut low and square, and a soft gauze of exquisite texture covered her bosom. This had been concealed throughout the evening by a skilful arrangement of rich lace. There was a single red rose in her hair.

"You are to present a petition," old Bugbee said, as if giving instructions. "Have you thought of it?"

"Trust me," she said, smilingly. "I am ready."

Leaning on the arm of the King's banker, Mrs. Carey ascended the wide stairs and on the first floor entered a small parlor. Through an open door she saw, in a great room beyond, three men, two of whom were bowing obsequiously, as if taking their leave.

The third person was the King.

Mrs. Oswald Carey smiled inwardly as she took in the points of this extraordinary figure, which was so like, yet so absurdly unlike, the prints with which all the world was familiar.

King George the Fifth was dressed in a splendid court suit, his breast blazing with orders, and his coat and waistcoat literally covered with gold embroidery. He was a short, heavy man, about fifty years of age, with a large, oval head, made still more large and oval by a great double chin, and by the soft fatness of his cheeks. His hair had been red, but was almost gray, and he was bald on top. He was closely shaven, showing a heavy, sensual mouth, out of all proportion to a small and rather fine nose. But his eyes gave the expression, or want of expression, to his face; they were set very far apart, and they were small, round and prominent, with white eyelashes.

Had his legs been proportionate to his body he would have been a large man; but they were very short. As he stood, in laced coat, breeches and buckled shoes, he was laughably like a figure on a playing-card—the figure in profile.

When the two men had backed out, the banker led Mrs. Carey into the presence. Then both intruders bowed reverentially. The King had sat down and he remained seated, paying not the least heed to the courtesies, but closely regarding the lady, whose extraordinary attractions had struck him at first sight.

Mrs. Carey advanced timidly and sank kneeling at his feet; and still the royal eye graciously scanned the beautiful petitioner. Once she raised her face to speak, but meeting the gaze of the King her suffused eyes sank again.

"She is quite overcome, Bugbee," said the King in a husky voice, as odd as his appearance.

"The sight of her King has overpowered her, your Majesty," answered old Bugbee, in a low tone of solemn awe.

"Come now," said George, encouragingly, and he touched the soft chin in raising her face: "Speak! What may we do for so fair a subject?"

"Oh, my King!" exclaimed the Beauty, clasping her hands, "I come with words only for your own ear."

An unquestionable frown shadowed Bugbee's face at the audacity of the woman. George's little eyes rested on the face of the speaker, as if he had not comprehended. The old banker remained standing in his place.

"I am bound, your Majesty, only to speak my message to you alone." She was so evidently excited and her pleading was so eloquent that the King was at once deeply interested.

George had raised her by taking her hand, and now he looked vaguely from her to old Bugbee.

"It is a message. You said a petition," said the King, dubiously, to his banker.

"Your Majesty, I thought—"

"Leave us, Bugbee," interrupted George, with a wave of his hand, not looking at the banker. "Let us hear this fair messenger."

Old Bugbee bowed and backed till he reached the door, hardly knowing whether to be pleased or indignant. He ought to have made the woman explain her plan to him before she entered the King's presence. Now he must wait, while she was free to act as she chose.

When the door closed on the banker Mrs. Carey's whole manner changed. She drew near the King and excitedly laid her hand on his arm.

"Oh, your Majesty! I have come to save you! You are betrayed!"

"Betrayed!" repeated George, trying to grasp the idea, while his little eyes were quite expressionless.

"Betrayed!" sobbed Mrs. Carey, "and all is lost except your Majesty's life and liberty."

"How do you know this? Why does not he know?" and the alarmed George nodded at the door.

"I do not know, your Majesty. I only know that I know it, and that I have come here to save you at the risk of my life; but what is my life to the precious life of my King?"

"Betrayed!" repeated George, as if the meaning of the word were slowly coming to him out of a fog. "But to-morrow—to-day—my men will proclaim the restoration."

"Oh, my King! to-morrow—"

"To-morrow I shall be King!" re-echoed George, while his glance wandered round the room, as if seeking to escape from the bore of excitement. "Betrayed! No, no; my men—"

"Your men, Sire, to-night will be dead or in prison," said Mrs. Carey, with increased firmness, reading the puerile nature and seeing the value of emphasis.

"I am to join my gentlemen at Aldershot at noon," muttered the King.

"No, no!" cried Mrs. Carey, and her beautiful hands clasped his arm beseechingly. "Your Majesty will be lost if you attempt to go—all who go there will be lost."

There was a depth in her voice at these words that carried conviction.

"Your Majesty must escape from England to-night!"

"Impossible!" cried George, with some dignity, but more irritation.

"Oh, listen to me, Sire!" she sobbed, "and do not despise my words because I am only a weak woman."

Here the small eyes of the King rested on her again, and the royal hand soothed her back to calmness by stroking her beautiful hair.

"Everything is known," she continued, "except that your Majesty has landed. If that were known all were lost. President Bagshaw has surrounded Aldershot with soldiers. There are twenty to one against the Royalists."

"But the King's name will change them;" and as he spoke George seemed really to believe his words. "When Colonel Arundel proclaims me King, as Dacre says he will—"

"Oh, Sire! Sire!" sobbed Mrs. Carey, now really touched by the vivid picture that appeared of her own treachery; "even that is known to the President—and all the soldiers who are to kill Colonel Arundel have already received his instructions!"

This precise and terrible statement staggered George, and a look of simple alarm came into his eyes.

"Then what is to be done?" he cried, in a bewildered way.

"Your Majesty must escape this night—this hour. You are not safe one moment in London; you know not who might betray you. The steam-yacht which brought you to England lies ready this moment to receive you."

George tried to think; but he could not. He walked about nervously.

"Let us have Bugbee here!" he exclaimed, with a burst of relief.

"No! I implore your Majesty! Do not trust any one—even him. He may be true as steel—I do not doubt it. If he be true he will not object to your escape. But not knowing all, he may advise delay—and delay is destruction."

"What shall I do, then? Tell me, tell me, child. What shall I do?"

There was a pitiful confession of weakness in the words and manner of George as he spoke. He had come to a woman, unmanned, and set her mind above his—had placed himself in her hands. And never were woman's hands readier for such a gift. He felt their caressing care before she spoke; already the renunciation was beginning to bear fruit for the weak one.

"You will call Mr. Bugbee here, Sire, in a few moments, and tell him without a word of explanation that you are going on board the yacht to-night."

"But it is so strange—"

"Kings have a right to strange fancies," she said smiling, but speaking with a firm tone. "You will simply tell him, Sire, that you wish to go directly to the yacht—now."

"Yes, I will do that," said George; and with royal brusqueness he said, "call him here!"

"I will send him, Sire—for I am going now," and she spoke slowly and sadly.

"You are going? No! You are not going until I am quite safe—until I have gone on board the steamer." George's tone was deeply earnest, and there was actually a kind of wail in his petition.

"I came to save my King; and now he is safe, my duty is done."

Still he urged his deliverer not to leave him till he had left the land; and after much entreaty she consented to ride with the King to the vessel, and thence to be driven to her home. It was half an hour later when she descended to her parlor, and found Mr. Bugbee impatiently awaiting her, as she had expected. With lightning words she explained the situation, and bade Bugbee order his private carriage.

"But this false alarm will be known to-morrow," cried Bugbee, wrung with wrath and perplexity. "He will learn that it is all a lie, and then—"

"There is no false alarm, man!" hissed the Beauty in the banker's ear. "It is all true—every word!"

"How did you learn it? Who is your informant?"

"President Bagshaw. Is that sufficient?"

The old banker gazed on Mrs. Carey with a dazed look, which gradually faded into one of intelligent admiration.

"I begin to understand," he said, slowly. "But why not have told me?"

"Because I wanted to save the King this time," answered Mrs. Carey. "You don't object, do you? I assure you it does not interfere with any plan of yours."

Mr. Bugbee could not see that it did, nor, even if it did, could he see how he could help it now. He had not gauged this woman rightly. She had outwitted him, and he saw it.

"You will order the carriage at once, won't you?" said Mrs. Carey, taking up her cloak.

"Yes, at once," and Bugbee rang the bell. "But he returns at once to America?" he asked in a low voice.

"That is his purpose—and mine," said the Beauty.

In less than half an hour Bugbee departed in a fly in hot haste to prepare the yacht for the royal guest; and some minutes later George the Fifth handed Mrs. Oswald Carey into the banker's closed carriage, and the pair were driven off to London.



CHAPTER XI.

THE RAISING OF THE FLAG.

Mr. Windsor's guests had all departed, the lights were out in the rooms so lately filled with the pleasant discord of animated voices, and the kindly old American host had gone to his rest with the satisfaction of believing that his last night in England would be enjoyably remembered by his new friends when he and his daughter were far on their voyage home.

But Mr. Windsor knew, a few weeks later, that beneath the smooth surface of his farewell party, as he had seen it, ran a secret current of fatal force and purpose. He had entertained unaware on that night nearly all the Royalist leaders, who had taken advantage of his invitation to meet in a place where suspicion of their movements could not follow.

The gentlemen left Mr. Windsor's house not in groups or even pairs, but singly. It was remarkable that none of them had a carriage, and that after leaving the house every one turned and walked in the same direction.

About an hour after the last guest had gone, in a large house belonging to a banished earl, where Featherstone had resided for the past two weeks, there was a full meeting of the Royalist chiefs, including those who had been at Mr. Windsor's, and many more. They had come singly from many quarters, but all on foot, and they had entered by a door on a quiet side street. There were perhaps forty men in all.

Here were old and dignified noblemen, more than one of whom wore threadbare coats and other signs of actual poverty; and here were young spirits aflame with the hope of action. Here a lot of antiquated baronet-squires flock together, and yonder stands a knot of grizzled colonels with the professional air of men awaiting orders. Here is the old Duke of Bayswater, listening through his eyeglasses, while Geoffrey Ripon and Featherstone have a quiet jest with Mr. Sydney.

Shortly after midnight—at about the same moment that Mrs. Oswald Carey received the bank-notes from Mr. Bugbee—the hum of conversation ceased in this meeting of the Royalists, and all eyes were turned toward a table in the centre of the long drawing-room, where stood John Dacre, who had just entered the room, his hands filled with papers.

Dacre was in the uniform of a staff officer, and on his breast he wore the battle-cross he had won in his first campaign, and also some gaudier honors awarded him for loyalty and devotion to the cause of the King.

The strong light of the chandelier showed the tense lines of his finely-cut face, which was white with excitement, and his eyes burned beneath his brows with a flame too strong to be subdued by any outer light.

Before he had uttered a word he had in some way imparted to many of those around him something of his own exaltation and intensity of spirit. He laid on the table the papers he had carried, and looked round the room with his face proudly raised.

"Gentlemen!" he said, holding his voice from an exulting cry, "our campaign has begun. We are no longer without a leader. Our monarch has come to claim his throne, and, if necessary, to win it by the sword. This night King George sleeps in London. To-morrow he will sit upon the throne of England. GOD SAVE THE KING!"

But, though death might be the consequence, a brave cheer burst from the hearts of some of those who heard—some, but only a few, and among these were Geoffrey, Featherstone, and the grizzled colonels.

To many others that cheer seemed as deadly an outburst as the roar of artillery. For a moment all stood as before; then they broke and mingled, talking excitedly, and a goodly number edged toward the door, and soon made their way out of the house.

But at least twenty men remained, while Dacre issued orders, handed instructions already written, or verbally repeated important words to the officers who should the next day head the revolution.

"Colonel Arundel," said Dacre, addressing a white-haired but erect man of sixty years, "to you belongs the first word of the restoration."

The old colonel walked to the table opposite Dacre and bowed, as if awaiting instructions.

"At the hour of noon to-morrow," continued Dacre, speaking to Colonel Arundel, "the King's banner will be raised at Aldershot, and at that hour you will proclaim to the brigade under your command the restoration of the Monarchy and his Majesty's presence in the camp." The veteran withdrew with a proud smile.

"Colonel Featherstone, Sir James Singleton, Lord Arthur Towneley, Mr. Blaney Balfour;" as Dacre read from a list, the gentlemen named drew near the table. "You are of the royal escort; you will await the arrival of the King at Aldershot and accompany him to the camp."

When Dacre had issued all the prepared orders for the outbreak, the meeting broke up.

As Geoffrey walked with Dacre to their quarters, the streets of London were deserted and quiet, as if no danger lay hid in the clouds of the morrow. Dacre was filled, body and soul, with the assurance of a glorious success; but cool-headed Geoffrey felt none of his enthusiasm, though his step was light and his voice as full of cheer as his friend's mood required. But when they met a burly, quiet policeman on his beat, who placidly wished them, "Good-morning, gentlemen," Geoffrey could not restrain a burst of hearty laughter—which, however, he did not explain to Dacre.

Geoffrey slept soundly for a few hours, and was up early to keep his appointment with Dacre. He could scarcely credit his senses to find himself on such an errand, as he strode through the already busy streets, meeting the quiet folk at their early occupations, while he was bent on civil war in two hours' time, with his overcoat pockets heavy with loaded pistols!

Dacre and he breakfasted in a private room at the old Army and Navy Club almost in silence. They had met at the door, coming from opposite directions, and greeted each other with a firm grip of the hand. Under a large overcoat Dacre wore his old staff uniform, and he smiled proudly as Geoffrey took off his outer coat and showed his ancestors' silver-hilted sword buckled high round his body, so that it should not strike the ground or be seen below the coat.

As they drove to the railway station it was a dull, drizzling morning. At the station they saw many of those who had attended the meeting the previous night; but, by arrangement, the conspirators did not recognize each other, even by a sign. When they arrived at the Aldershot Station there was no indication of anything unusual. A few orderlies from the camp came and went, but this was an every-day sight.

The Royalists dispersed at once, some walking, some in the common camp omnibuses, and some in cabs. The point of assembly was in the officers' lines of the infantry camp, where Colonel Arundel, who was acting brigadier, had provided a large mess tent for their reception—and on this morning, by his arrangement and for their guidance, no other tent but this in the camp was marked by a flag.

On arriving at the tent, Dacre and Geoffrey found only two of their fellow-conspirators, both youths, awaiting them. But it was very early, not 9.30, and the hour of meeting was 11. The next man to arrive was Mr. Sydney, who, fearing a shot from his old enemy, the gout, more than a bullet from a Republican rifle, stepped gingerly from the omnibus that dropped him near the lines. As Geoffrey shook his hand, a pang went through his conscience for ever having made a jest of so simple and brave a heart.

By ones and twos, as the hours passed, the Royalists came to the rendezvous. Not once had they met with question or opposition. The sentries, as they passed, stood to "attention," evidently regarding them as officers belonging to the camp.

The mess tent was well removed from the regular roads of the camp, and only a few soldiers passed near it all the morning.

Once, while Geoffrey stood at the open door, a mounted artillery officer rode past. He was a young man, with a strongly-marked, stern face, and as he passed the tent it seemed to Geoffrey that he cast a sudden, keen glance within. At first, Geoffrey was so convinced of this that he turned to speak to Dacre; but glancing after the officer, he saw him stop and speak to a man who was coming toward the tent, and whom Geoffrey recognized as one of the military men of the previous night's meeting. After a few words they saluted like friends and separated.

"You know that officer, sir?" asked Geoffrey, as the old soldier came to the tent door. "I thought he looked this way in an odd manner as he passed."

"Oh, yes," answered the other; "that is young Devereux, the clever fellow who has invented the tremendous gun, you know, and revolutionized the old tactics. An able fellow, sir—and a colonel at thirty-six. I knew his father forty years ago at Woolwich, when we were cadets."

"You think I was mistaken, then, in fancying that he looked this way?" asked Geoffrey.

"I should say so—bless my soul! I should hope so, too. That's the cleverest fellow in the whole service; and we don't want to meet him at the very start."

"Perhaps he may be with us?" suggested Geoffrey.

"No; it isn't likely. Devereux is with nothing but science and discipline. But if he were with us he would be better than twenty regiments."

"And against us?"

"Ah! there are circumstances that alter cases. With us he would be free to act on his own devising, for we should make him commander of the forces. Against us he is only a subordinate, controlled by some stupid major-general."

Eleven o'clock came, and there were twenty-seven men in the tent. Besides these were the several officers of the regiment in camp, who were in their quarters ready for the signal.

At the door of the mess tent rose a tall flag-pole, with halyards attached, which entered the tent. To these, by the hands of Dacre, was fastened the Royal Standard of England, to be given to the breeze at the sound of the noonday gun.

At half-past eleven the bugles of the infantry regiments were heard sounding for a general parade; and in a few minutes the scarlet lines were seen on the parade ground, forming, wheeling, and marching into brigade formation.

The commanding officer and the colonels of six out of seven regiments would call on the troops to cheer for King George when they saw the royal banner at the mast. Inside the mess tent there was a scene of quiet preparation, which had its ludicrous as well as pathetic features. Many of the Royalists had come in military uniforms of various kinds and countries. As the hour drew near they laid aside their overcoats, and composed an odd group for a military critic. The Duke of Bayswater wore an old red tunic of the yeomanry cavalry, which he had commanded in his county half a century before; Mr. Sydney a lancer's fatigue jacket, which he had worn as a lieutenant in King Edward's time; there was one in the tunic of a captain of French artillery, and several others wore continental uniforms. Every one was armed in some way or other.

As the infantry brigade wheeled into line on the parade-ground a distant trumpet sounded far in the rear.

"Dacre, what is that trumpet?" asked Geoffrey, in a low tone.

Dacre looked at his watch as he listened. He did not reply, but shook his head and smiled at Geoffrey.

"That is an artillery trumpet," said the old officer to whom Geoffrey had spoken before, and who now came quietly to Dacre. "It came from the direction of Colonel Devereux's battery—though I remember distinctly he told me that this was not a field day."

It was clear to Geoffrey's eye that Dacre was suffering under some heavy fear or despondency that quelled his excitement. There was a look in his face of tense expectancy that was pitiful to his friend.

"The King was to have been here at eleven," said Geoffrey to him at last. "It is now twenty minutes to twelve. Can anything have happened, Dacre?"

Dacre looked at him reproachfully; but only shook his head, without a smile. Geoffrey walked to the door, and turned suddenly, almost with a shout.

"Here's Featherstone!" he cried. "He was in the King's escort; he has news."

The Royalists crowded around Featherstone as he entered, but their eager eyes found no reassurance in his face, which was pale, and, still more unlike Featherstone, full of anger and gloom.

He did not reply to the hail of questions which met him, but looked around for Dacre, and went to him.

"The King?" asked Dacre, sternly.

"The King has disappeared," answered Featherstone, "and no one knows where he has gone."

There was a dead silence in the tent; not a man moved. Dacre looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to twelve.

"He may be on the way here by another route," suggested the old Duke.

"What have you done to obtain information?" asked Dacre.

"At eleven o'clock the escort waiting at the station in London telephoned us that the train had gone and the King had not arrived. We waited ten minutes and then I telephoned direct to the house of the King's banker and received in answer these words: 'The King left here at two o'clock this morning to go on board his steam-yacht. He has sailed for America.' In reply to my questions, no reason was given for his going, as no one there knew, and Bugbee had not returned since the King's departure."

Featherstone folded his arms and looked at Dacre, on whom again all eyes turned. He held in one hand the royal banner, fast to the halyards, and in the other hand his watch.

At this moment the artillery trumpet heard before sounded much nearer, and it was answered, apparently, by other trumpets at different points of the camp.

"Gentlemen," said Dacre, drawing up his tall figure with superb pride, and looking calmly round the tent, "in two minutes it will be noon—the hour of our movement. Yonder rides the brave man who will proclaim the Monarchy, and it is too late now to warn him or his fellow-officers and patriots. We may draw back; but they will go on. The world will be the witness. If the King has been false to us—and we do not know that he has—we shall be true to our cause and to ourselves."

There was a pause. Dacre's eyes were on the dial in his hand.

"Gentlemen!" he cried, as he placed the watch in his pocket, "it is twelve o'clock! Shall I raise the King's flag?"

"Ay! Up with it!" rang out the brave shout.

At that instant the noonday gun boomed, and had the Royalists listened they might have heard the rumble of artillery and the rattling of cavalry surrounding them in a vast circle. But had they heard it they would not have been stayed. To withdraw now, to sneak away from the very brink of danger, would be worse than death. They must go on to the end. The world's eyes were on them, or would be to-morrow; the world is always looking at yesterday.

Like bees from a hive they swarmed, a handful of men, from the door of the mess-tent, drawing their swords to conquer a kingdom for a king who had run away. There was a noble despair in their hearts.

"Up with the King's banner!" shouted Featherstone, and Dacre went to the mast and drew up the flag.

"God save the King!" shouted every throat, as the heavy folds went upward.

But there was a hitch in the halyards, and Dacre's excitement did not allow him to remove it quickly. The royal banner stopped on its way aloft—stopped at the half mast—and there ominously remained for a full half minute before the lines were cleared and it soared to the masthead.

On the parade-ground seven regiments of infantry had wheeled into line, and presented arms as the commander rode to the front of the brigade. When the noonday gun boomed, a thrill went through the scarlet ranks, for even the linesmen knew that a tragedy was about to be enacted. The word had been passed through the camp that the Royalist traitors would at that hour declare themselves.

Never was drama seen upon the stage in which the actors approached the tragic ending so fatuously, so deliberately.

Colonel Arundel, riding in front of the staff, halted and faced the brigade. The troops presented arms; the band played the national anthem, "God Save the People!" When the music had ceased the eyes of Colonel Arundel were turned to the flag-pole at the mess-tent. His heart leaped within him when he saw the lines shake, and then, true to the moment of time, up went the flag of the King.

"Soldiers!" shouted the old commander, baring his white head and pointing to the royal banner; "behold the flag of your King and country! King George has come to claim his own again, and he is now in personal command of this camp. God save the King!"

The whole brigade stared at the flagstaff where the big banner of King George had stopped at the half-mast like a mourning emblem. A round of suppressed laughter came from the troops—a sound that sent a shudder through the old colonel's heart, which no violent outcry could have done.

The vibration of the commander's voice was still in the air when a horseman dashed down to the head of the brigade, a man with a face of terrible power and purpose. It was Colonel Devereux. He faced the brigade like a man cast in iron, so still he sat for half a minute. He was an electric centre, reaching the eyes and nerves of every man in the brigade.

"Present—arms!" and the brigade sprang into motion beneath his thrilling voice.

"Men!" he said slowly, but with a force that sent his voice to both flanks of the brigade, "the command of this camp has this day been given to me by the only power on earth able to give it—the President of the British Republic."

"And I, sir—what am I?" indignantly demanded Colonel Arundel, but in a voice too low to reach the soldiers' ears. Insulted as he was he would have no altercation in front of the troops.

"You, sir!" answered Colonel Devereux, and his voice rang like a trumpet, "you are a traitor to the people!"

While this scene was in action, an insignificant movement took place on the inner flank of one regiment in the brigade. A sergeant and six men were detached, and the squad marched at a quick step along the rear till they came to the centre, when they wheeled to the front, passed through the formation, and halted directly in front of Colonel Arundel. The grounding of their arms completed the terrible charge of the new commander.

"Soldiers," cried Colonel Devereux, turning to the brigade, "behold the death of a traitor!"

The sergeant gave the word to his men in a low voice, and seven rifles were levelled at Colonel Arundel, who sat still in his saddle, hat in hand, as he had saluted the King's flag. One swift turn of his head now and he saw the great emblazoned banner in the air; the next moment his breast was torn to pieces, and the old man fell forward as his horse swerved, and then the body tumbled from the saddle and lay in front of the brigade.

"Colonel Gardener, take command here," said Devereux to an officer in the horror-struck staff; "and you, gentlemen," designating three or four of the staff by a motion of his hand, "follow me." He wheeled his horse and rode straight for the mess-tent, where the royal banner was flying.

A young artillery officer, with one Gatling gun and a dozen troopers, were galloping toward the place from another direction. They reached the tent at the same moment as Colonel Devereux.

"Halt!" he shouted to the gunners, and the mounted party stopped as if turned to stone.

"Haul down that flag!" he ordered Dacre, pointing with his naked sword.

"Never!" answered Dacre, standing at the foot of the mast.

Colonel Devereux gave a stern command to the officer of the gun; the piece was trained on the flagstaff, and next instant, with a hellish roar, its sixty bullets tore the flag-pole into shreds, and the enormous banner cumbered the wet earth.

Before the discharge Geoffrey had bodily seized Dacre and dragged him out of range. Better, perhaps, had he left him to his fate, for death at that moment, with his duty done, his sword in hand and his flag above him, would have saved him the deeper agony of shame and disappointment, which walked with him like shadows henceforward to the grave.

The officer in charge of the gun ordered his troopers and drivers to ride across the fallen banner; and the hoofs and muddy wheels rent it to pieces and befouled it in the mire.

"You are a coward!" cried Dacre, and rushing to the front he crossed swords with the mounted officer, wounding him in the arm. Next moment he was stretched senseless on the ill-fated flag, a gunner having struck him down with the stock of his carbine.

The others yielded without a word. The artillery officer, his hand dripping blood, took their swords one by one and flung them contemptuously on the flag, beside John Dacre's senseless body.

As they were marched off, surrounded by a cavalry guard, to be taken to London, Mr. Sydney, seeing that the Duke of Bayswater could hardly keep up, gave his arm to the infirm old man.

"This is a grim joke," said Sydney; "I wonder what they will do with our friend Dacre."

"Thanks," said the poor old fellow, leaning heavily on Sydney, and putting up his collar to keep out the rain. Then he turned a last look at Dacre, still lying as he had fallen. "If he is dead, I suppose they will bury him like a Christian gentleman, as he was." And, raising his hat, the courtly old man saluted the fallen soldier.

Featherstone handed Geoffrey a cigar, and lighted one himself as the procession started.

"I wonder where King George the Fifth is about this time," he said, with a forlorn smile.

"No matter where he is," answered Geoffrey, in a voice of settled belief; "one thing is certain: Monarchy is dead forever in England—and it is time!"



CHAPTER XII.

IN THE LION'S MOUTH.

The news of the suppression of the conspiracy and the arrest of the ringleaders caused great excitement over England. Enormous crowds paraded the streets of London demanding the exile of all persons who had formerly borne titles. The King was hung in effigy and his lay figure cremated in the public kiln at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Socialism became rampant. A rabble of the lowest orders of the people invaded Hyde Park and the other public gardens, making day and night hideous with their orgies. The famous Albert memorial statue was blown to shivers by dynamite at high noon, and unbridled license became the watchword of the masses. Such anarchy had never been known in England. Even the government, who at first were inclined to suffer the demonstration against the Royalists to gather head, grew alarmed. Absolute revolution was imminent, and resolute measures had to be taken. Nor did the public temper cool until threescore of the most wretched of those who live in the foul dens of the great city lay dead along the streets of Kensington and Belgravia. The military were forced to shoot them down to stem the tumult.

Comparative quiet was restored at the end of ten days, and then the government ventured to bring the prisoners to London under a strong guard and lodge them in the Tower. Twenty thousand people, it is estimated, dogged the footsteps of the troops who escorted them, and it was only the points of bayonets and the muskets ready to deal death at a word that secured their safety. The conspirators marched two and two with lancers carrying loaded carbines on each flank. There were sixteen in all. John Dacre and Geoffrey Ripon were side by side. Neither of them had much hope of escaping the fury of the mob. The Duke of Bayswater and Colonel Featherstone rode a little in advance. The poor old duke's hat had fallen off, and his bald head was a shining mark for missiles. An egg had struck his pate and made an offensive daub.

The streets through which the procession passed were lined with spectators. From Government House, President Bagshaw and the leading members of the party in power looked down upon their victims, and the windows of Whitehall across the way afforded a view to the friends of the opposition, among whom sat Richard Lincoln and his daughter. The great commoner would have preferred to avoid the spectacle, but Mary had expressed a desire to see the prisoners on their way through the streets. She looked pale and stony-eyed as she sat watching for them, and her father sighed as he observed her, for he knew her secret. His brow was anxious. These were troublesome times and a source of concern to all who loved their country. He knew the government to be composed of men who thought only of their own interests. This semblance of authority was the sole bar that prevented the insubordinate masses from overriding law and decency. How long would President Bagshaw be able to withstand the popular clamor for a liberty that was akin to pillage? This foolish conspiracy had biassed thousands of order-loving citizens against conservative measures. His own party were reduced to a pitiful minority, and the conduct of the Royalists had caused a reaction which threatened to engulf the constitution and the laws. And, as if that were not enough to sadden the soul of an honest man, his only daughter loved the traitor whose mad enthusiasm had precipitated these ills upon the country.

It was Mary's voice that interrupted his revery.

"They are coming, father."

Lincoln looked out, and as far as the eye could reach the streets were black with a sea of heads. The glistening of bayonets, the waving flags, the uniforms, the mad shouts and derisive groans, and above the tumult the drums beating in full rhythm, made an exciting scene. But all was lost upon Mary. Her eye had singled out John Dacre, and she was gazing down at him in speechless agony. He appeared to her wan and sick. His clothes were torn and covered with mud. But he bore himself as ever, erect and dignified.

As though by instinct, he looked up to the window, and their eyes met. He raised his hat with the courtly grace of a gentleman, forgetting for an instant the situation and the consequences that may accrue to her he saluted. The glance of the crowd followed his gesture, and many caught sight of the pale girl and beheld her throw a rose to the handsome prisoner. It fell wide of him for whom it was meant; indeed, he did not see the flower fall. It dropped among the crowd, and would have been trampled in the mud beneath the feet of those who hated her lover had not Geoffrey Ripon darted from the ranks and snatched it up to his infinite peril, for the trooper at his side struck him with the butt of his carbine. "See," he said to Dacre, who was stalking on in unconscious revery; "see, she has thrown you a rose. Be of good cheer, man." And Geoffrey could not help thinking that if the one he loved had dropped a rose at his feet, how slight a thing his present plight would seem.

But Richard Lincoln saw her action, and, with a start of anger, he said, "That man is a traitor, Mary. And yet you are my daughter."

Those of his friends standing near had failed to notice her throw the rose, nor did they now heed the blush which mantled her face as she looked up at their leader.

"I know it, father; but I love him," she whispered, and she would have fainted had not Lincoln supported her with his strong arms and led her from the room.

There was another also who watched the prisoners with eyes of recognition. Mrs. Oswald Carey had left her lodgings early in the morning so as to secure a good position from which to view the procession, and from a coign of vantage close by the houses of Parliament was feasting her gaze upon the victims of her treachery. A long cloak covered her figure, and her face was muffled. Only her beautiful eyes were visible. Owing to the bitter feeling prevalent against the Royalists, she feared to show herself, for she had been so intimately associated with the dissipations of the nobility, the people would have stoned her. She felt proof against discovery in her present garb, and had waited for hours, hedged about by the rabble, for a glimpse of Geoffrey Ripon.

Her revenge had been swift and equal to her expectation. Its sequel was yet to follow. As she gazed at the face of the young man, which exposure had rather ennobled and made more handsome, strange feelings were awakened within her. She scarcely knew whether she were sorry to see him there in peril of his life, or that she would be pleased to know that he had paid the penalty of treason with his head. Her love and hate were so intermingled that she could not distinguish which had the upper hand. He passed close to where she was standing. But even had he been able to recognize her, he could not have suspected that her perfidy was the occasion of his misfortune. She had guarded her secret carefully. President Bagshaw had been true to his word. No rumor of the means by which the conspiracy was unearthed had reached the public ear.

As she made her way home through the crowded street after the procession had passed, reflection as to what would be Geoffrey's fate absorbed her thoughts. In the present state of the public temper it was not likely that he would escape death. To be shot for high treason seemed the logical sequel to his escapade. Well, if it must be so, she preferred to see him on the scaffold rather than in the arms of another. She would wait until all was over, and then find in America solace for her disappointment. She had played her cards well. The King was madly in love with her, and she had no fear of his sailing away without her. If so, there was Jawkins still. She had lulled the manager into such a feeling of security that he had run up to Scotland to undertake an important contract. An American billionaire, having rented the Trossachs for the season, had engaged him to superintend his arrangements. Titled people were at a premium since the discovery of the conspiracy, and Jawkins could command his own prices. His reply to this patron, "I will provide you with a pair of peers if I have to filch them from prison, but they come high," was illustrative alike of the energy and the business sagacity of the man. The poor old Archbishop of Canterbury, who had escaped from Aldershot scot free, was being hurried from one corner of England to the other to supply dinner requirements. Jawkins had caused her some trouble at first, it is true. Upon the receipt of her telegram at Ripon House he had hurried up to London, and ferreting out her lodgings accused her of wishing to give him the slip. She had assuaged his feelings by lunching with him at a public restaurant and permitting him to engage their passages to America for a fortnight later. Had it not been for the King's arrival she would have kept faith with him.

The trial of the prisoners was set down for one week after their consignment to the Tower. It was to take place in the House of Parliament, and the indictment against all was for high treason. The attorney-general, James McPherson, was to conduct the case for the government, and the accused retained the services of Calhoun Benjamin, a great-grandson of the Benjamin for some time a famous lawyer in the reign of Victoria. It was not permissible for any member of either house to appear as counsel. The constitution required that the joint bodies should adjudge the cause. Still, after the formal arguments any member was at liberty to rise to a question of privilege and address the assembly. Such was indeed the usual custom.

Mary Lincoln doubtless had this in mind when she whispered to her father the evening before the trial, "You will speak for him, will you not, father?"

"I cannot tell," said Richard Lincoln. "Why should I, Mary? His desert is death, and I should not know what to say in his behalf."

"But if all of us were treated according to our deserts, how few of us would escape scathing. Only you, father; I know of no one beside."

The patriot looked down at the pale girl sitting at his feet and stroked her hair. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she gazed at him imploringly. He knew her secret to the uttermost now. She had told him, all the evening of that dreadful day when London saw her throw down a rose to her country's traitor. Still, if it were to do again, would she not do it? Her love was stronger than her sense of shame.

Richard Lincoln sat and gazed into the fire. These were indeed troublesome times, but a light seemed breaking just below where the clouds lowered darkest. A week had seen a great change in public sentiment. Debate in Parliament had been fierce and bitter. At the head of his party he had striven to show that those who held the reins of power abused and deceived the masses, and that true liberty lay not in ignorant usurpation of right, but intelligent recognition of a lawfully constituted authority which regarded all alike. At first his purpose had been misinterpreted, but as by degrees the true significance of his words were grasped by the popular mind, groans gave place to silence, and sullenness to cheers. He had not hesitated to wield the axe of reform with a yeoman's hand, and the flying chips told of the havoc he was making among the dead wood of ignorance and craft. It was his aim to demonstrate that a demagogue in the seat of power is no less a menace to the happiness of the people than an aristocrat.

Yet in the face of his triumph arose the shadow of this strange, unnatural love; for it seemed unnatural to him that his only child should have given her heart to one whose ambition it was to destroy that which he had helped to establish and bring back the frippery of an unhallowed past. He had found it difficult at first to conceive it as possible, but her confession, and more eloquently still her pallid cheeks, left no room to question the truth of this misfortune. And to-morrow he would be called upon to doom to the scaffold the man whose being had become so much a part of hers as to have led her to play the traitor also. As thus he pondered the breaking light seemed to fade from the sky, and the clouds lowered gloomy and impenetrable.

"Father," said Mary again, "I am sure you can save him."

Lincoln shook his head. "Not even if I would, girl," he replied, sternly.

"You, too, desert me," she murmured. She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then with a sudden impulse she stood, tall and resolute. Her eyes flashed fire. "If it is wrong to love a traitor, let it be so. I cannot help loving John Dacre, and I should like to die with him."

Richard Lincoln gazed at her in amazement. There was pride, too, in his glance. He saw in her transfigured face a repetition of his own youth when the spirit soared impatient of restraint and knew not yet the curbs that check the extravagance oL ardent natures. In those early days he had struck out for the ideal right, even as her heart in the fulness of its love poured out its tide of passion. He held out his hands to her, and his lips trembled.

"My child, my child! would to God I could save your lover. You are dearer to me than all the world beside. Do not spurn your father's arms. His breast is your rightful place for comfort now."

She suffered him to clasp her in his embrace. "I will be brave," she whispered, looking up into his eyes. "Kiss me; I will be brave, and—and when he dies let me die, too."

"My child!" murmured Lincoln again, and there was terror as well as pity in his tone. He held her close, and her head rested on his shoulder. "All may yet be well, my dear one," he said tenderly.

Before daybreak the next morning a stream of people was pouring up from the city and winding its way through Cheapside and Fleet Street and the Strand to the judgment hall in the Houses of Parliament. By the time the guard from the Tower reached Westminster, vast multitudes lined the sidewalks and formed so dense a mass in the square in front of the gates that progress was well-nigh impossible. The populace was orderly, however, and fell back before the horses of a troop of cavalry, with no further demonstration than a sullen murmur.

The prisoners were brought before the bar of the Commons, and the Upper House entered immediately after to take their seats. It was an impressive scene. One might have heard a pin drop as the officer of the Crown rose to read the indictment, and again when, as he sat down, the hoarse voice of the clerk called out the names of the accused, shorn of all titles, to rise and answer to the charge of high treason against the Republic of Great Britain and Ireland.

"What say you, John Dacre—guilty or not guilty?"

"Not guilty."

Dacre's glance moved gravely around the vast hall and met the gaze of a thousand eyes without flinching. Fate willed that it should distinguish a pale, lovely face amid the press that lined the galleries, and linger thereon a moment as though loath to turn aside; but even while he gazed, the drapery and shoulder of another woman were interposed between his sight and the delicate features of Mary Lincoln, and shut her from his view. "What say you, Geoffrey Ripon? Are you guilty or not guilty?"

It was these words that had caused the stranger to lean forward and crane her neck—a beautiful neck that, muffled as she was, did not wholly escape the admiration of her neighbors. Her eyes sparkled with a light cold and malicious as the gleam which emanates from a blade of steel. As the lips of young Geoffrey Ripon flung back a clear denial of the charge, a hope was in his heart that the sweet maiden of his fancy might be among the hundreds looking down. She was not there, but her rival, Mrs. Oswald Carey, sat and watched each shade of his expression.

And now the witnesses were summoned and confronted the prisoners. The proofs were ample and overwhelming. It almost seemed mistrusting the intelligence of the judges to dwell upon the evidence, to quote the opening words of the attorney-general, and as a consequence the argument of that official was a model of conciseness. Then the time was come for the defendants' counsel. Mr. Benjamin arose and spoke for an hour. His speech was painstaking, but not particularly impressive. In conclusion he said that rebellion had often been punished before without the shedding of blood. He instanced Jefferson Davis, the great Secessionist, and the clemency of the American people. Mr. McPherson in reply adduced the Irish rebels executed by the government of Victoria, and thereat a shout arose which shook the walls of Parliament and was echoed by the crowd outside. Even the prisoners glanced at each other with downcast looks. The perspiration stood out in beads on the bald head of the Duke of Bayswater.

"It is all up with us," whispered Ripon to Dacre.

"My God and my King! It is a noble cause to die for," answered the cavalier, and his proud face looked beatified.

There was a dread and awful silence as the attorney-general finished his last words. The hour for judgment had arrived, unless it were that some senator or commoner wished to speak for or against the prisoners. A bitter and illiterate friend of the government saw fit to spring to his feet and enter upon a violent harangue. Clemency would be misplaced in the present juncture, he said. Death for one and all was the proper measure to be meted out to Royalists and traitors. His truculent words seemed to please the audience, and he sat down amid a tempest of applause. For an instant there was no movement on either side of the house, and then Richard Lincoln, the leader of the opposition, arose and stepped out into the aisle, so as to command his hearers. A flutter of expectation, a murmur of surprise, spread through the assembly, and as he opened his mouth to speak, every ear was alert to catch his words.

"I rise," he said, "to speak for the people, the great, true-souled people. They have, it seems to me, no representative here, or I have failed to interpret aright the language of my predecessor. Are the people merciless? Have they no heart? I know that the contrary is true. It is no argument with them that others have preferred cruelty to mercy, and vengeance to justice. I stand here to-day, for the people and for justice."

He paused, and as no sound expressed one way or the other the feelings of his auditors, he spoke once more:

"Let these men live. Fine or imprisonment will accomplish all that you desire, save the satisfaction of revenge. Capital punishment in this age of the world is an ugly smear upon the escutcheon of constitutional liberty. Let these men live, and your children's children will write you down in their books as worthy of remembrance. They are guilty, but blood will not atone for wrong-doing. Let them live, I say, in the name of justice and the people."

He finished and sat down. Not much of a speech in the way of argument, some will say. It is the manner more than the matter of words that sways men's hearts. No cheers were heard, it is true, but his hearers sat upon the benches thoughtful and silent. The Speaker of the House glanced about him, but no one rose to contradict the testimony that had fallen from the lips of Richard Lincoln.

And now the judges arose and left the hall. For four hours the assembly and the crowds in the streets waited in patience. Before the fifth had elapsed the usher's rod announced that a verdict had been reached. The silence was breathless. The Speaker took the scroll from the hands of William Peters, the leader of the House, and read aloud that John Dacre, as the master spirit of the late rebellion at Aldershot, was sentenced to be shot to death at noon of the next day, and that all the other leaders were to be imprisoned for the term of fifteen years.