ives
there. It is said by those who claim to know that he is in France, but
they must be wrong, and I must have seen him. The king says I did, and
he can do no wrong. I neither deny nor affirm, though I fancy that my
real friends will not believe me guilty of the indiscretion."

"I do not believe it," protested Tyrconnel. "I know you are all that is
good."

"Thank you, my lord," returned Frances. "If I am good, I remain so for my
own sake. As for the gossips, they may think what they please, talk about
me to their hearts' content, and go to the devil for his content, if he
can find it in them."

Seeing that Tyrconnel wanted to speak with Frances alone, I drew to a
little distance for the purpose of giving him an opportunity to press his
suit, in which I so heartily wished him success.

It is uphill work making love to a woman whose heart is filled to
overflowing with love of another man, and I was sorry for poor earnest
Tyrconnel as I watched him pleading his case with Frances. He was not a
burning light intellectually, but he entertained a just estimate of
himself and was wise enough not to take any one of the daintily baited
hooks that were dangled before him by some of the fairest anglers in
England. But manlike, he yearned for the hook that was not in the water.

I followed Frances and Tyrconnel back to the palace, and when they parted
at the King's Street Gate, he asked me to go with him to the sign of the
King's Head and have a tankard of mulled sack and a breast of Welsh
mutton right off the spit.

Tyrconnel's speech was made up of an amusing lisp grafted on the broadest
Irish brogue ever heard outside of Killarney. It cannot be reproduced in
print; therefore I shall not attempt it. But it was so comical that one
could never rid one's self of a desire to laugh, be his Lordship ever so
earnest. As a result of this amusing manner of speech, his most serious
words never produced a thoughtful impression on his hearers. It is said
that the king once laughed when Tyrconnel, in tears, told him of the
death of his Lordship's mother.

Arriving at the King's Head, Tyrconnel chose a table in a remote alcove
of the dining room. After the maid had brought us the mulled sack and had
gone to fetch the mutton, his Lordship began earnestly, but laughably, to
tell me his troubles, and I did my best to listen seriously, though with
poor result.

"I want to marry your cousin, baron," he said. "Yes, yes, go on. Laugh! I
don