f a vengeance on those who had betrayed him
might momentarily awake his passion, and excite him to some effort of
vindictive anger.

In his hours of mad debauchery he would rave about landing in England,
and a plan he had conceived for assassinating the king; then it was his
scheme to murder Mr. Pitt, and sometimes all these were abandoned for
the desire to make Miss Walsingham herself pay the penalty of her base
and unwomanly treachery.

'He came to our convent gate in his garb of a friar to beg,' said
Marietta. 'I saw him but for an instant, and I knew him at once. He was
one of those who, in the "red days" of the Revolution, mocked the order
he belonged to by wearing a rosary of playing-dice! and he recognised
me as one who had even more shamelessly exposed herself.' A deep crimson
flush covered her face and neck as she spoke, and as quickly fled, to
leave her as pale as a corpse. 'Oh, _mio caro_,' cried she, 'there are
intoxications more maddening to the senses than those of drinking; there
are wild fevers of the mind, when degradation seems a sort of martyrdom;
and in the very depth of our infamy and shame we appear to ourselves to
have attained to something superhuman in self-denial. It was my fate
to live with one who inspired these sentiments.' She paused for a few
seconds, and then, trembling on every accent, she said: 'To win his
love, to conquer the heart that would not yield to me, I dared more than
ever woman, far more than ever man, dared.'

'Here's to the king's buffoon, and a bumper toast it shall be,' burst
in the friar, with a drunken ribaldry; 'and if there are any will not
drink it, let him drink to the Minister's mistress!'

To the sudden gesture which Gerald's anger evoked, Marietta quickly
interposed her hand, and, in a low, soft voice, besought him to remain
quiet.

'If the cause were up, or the cause were down,
What matter to you or to me;
For though the Prince had played his crown,
_Our_ stake was a bare bawbee!'

sang out Kelly lustily. 'Who'll deny it? Who'll say there wasn't sound
reason and philosophy in that sentiment? None knew it better than Prince
Charlie himself.'

'And was this man the companion of a Prince?' whispered Gerald in her
ear.

'Even so; fallen fortunes bring degraded followers,' said Marietta. 'I
have heard it said that many of his father's associates were of this
stamp.'

'And how could men hope to restore a cause thus contaminated and
st