mire of steep and devious lanes to tell them; was he to leave them
unwarned? Love and Duty fought their old battle, and with the old
result--Love conquered and the secret was told. He had not, it is true,
heard the full purport of the Secretary's grave words or of Charles'
light replies: but what he had caught, tallying with the Chaplain's
disclosures of an earlier hour, had led him to conclude that there was a
villainous plot on foot, of which the King did not seem to approve, and
which therefore might be made known to those interested without real
breach of faith. What he knew he told, and eked it out with what he
could but conjecture.

The conference lasted long. While it was confined to the designs of the
French, on which the short gusts of the Lieutenant-Governor's stormy
impatience had thrown a transient gleam of lurid light, the ladies were
all attention. When the page began to talk of the King's loyal resolves
and of what great things he would do, they gave less heed. It seemed to
them that Charles Stuart was all too young, too much bound to his
mother, to be trusted in an affair wherein her favourite took an
interest. Tom pleaded his master's cause with the zeal of one who felt
himself to have done that master some wrong; but he pleaded in vain.
Little did the Jersey ladies care who might bear rule in the British
islands; their chief care was for what would affect Jersey, and--above
all men and things of Jersey--their dear Michael, now in exile.

It had long grown dusk, and Tom knew that he was absent without leave.
His visit must be cut short. If he glanced significantly at Marguerite
as he bent over Rose's hand, if he hoped that Marguerite would follow
him to the door and allow an integration of former toys, he was only
building on a precocious knowledge of the sex. "I will but lock the door
after Mr. Elliot," said she to Rose, in patois, "be tranquil, my sister,