DONOUGH!

THE night of suspense—longer than a year of happiness—wore to an end, because all things end. At noon Lady Betty stood in Lady Russell’s drawing-room, leaning against the window and looking out, so wan and wasted that her hostess started at the sight of her as she entered. The two women greeted each other with an affection born of sympathy, in spite of their brief acquaintance, and as they stood there with clasped hands, they heard the clatter of hoofs in the street below, a noise at the door, steps on the stair.

Betty uttered a cry and stood rigid; it had come, good or ill! The door was flung open and Devonshire’s messenger, plashed with mire from hard riding, bowed at the threshold, holding up a letter.

“From his grace to Lady Russell,” he said.

Lady Russell tore it open with shaking hands but Betty did not stir; she stood like a statue; she thought her heart had stopped beating. The older woman clasped the paper to her bosom, murmuring a thanksgiving.

“He is saved!” she cried joyfully, holding out the letter to Lady Clancarty, “your husband is saved! The king grants his life, but exiles him.”

Lady Betty swayed and would have fallen but for her friend. The good woman caught her in her arms.

“That merciful king!” cried Lady Russell, tears streaming down her face; “ah, if I had been so blessed!”

Betty flung her arms around her neck and kissed her.

“I must go to the Tower!” she cried eagerly, after a moment, “I may go now.”

“Nay, madam,” interposed the duke’s messenger respectfully, “his grace did especially charge me to beg you to remain here until he came for you.”

“Ay,” said Lady Russell, glancing at the letter, “he speaks of it here.”

A shade of deep disappointment crossed the youthful face, but she bowed her head.

“I shall await the duke’s pleasure,” she said.

After the messenger withdrew, Lady Russell touched her friend’s frock playfully.“My dear,” she remarked, “you will not go to welcome him back to the world in this sombre garb?”

Betty glanced down dolefully.

“I brought no other,” she replied.

Lady Russell smiled and sent for Alice.

“My child,” she said, “I heard this morning that there was strong hope—yet I dared not tell you, for fear of disappointment. But I sent Alice for a gayer gown than this for your lover.”

Betty blushed like a rose, for in walked Alice, carrying in her arms the flowered brocade that her mistress had worn at Newmarket, and Alice was all smiles and tears. Nothing would do but that Lady Russell and Alice must array her as for a festival.

“For the Tower!” protested Betty, between tears and laughter, trembling and listening for a sound.

“For your husband,” whispered Lady Russell, kissing her cheek, “the king has granted you a pension sufficient for you on the Continent—alas, that you must go.”

“Ah, but with him,” said Lady Betty smiling divinely.

It was while they talked that Alice came by chance upon Denis on the staircase; Denis was smiling like a cherub. He stood before her awkwardly.

“Faix,” he said, “I was afther thinking ye a sneak, my darlint, but, shure, I misjudged ye,” he paused, shuffling his feet with unfamiliar shyness in his aspect, while Alice eyed him with prim disapproval.

“My darlint,” he said, “I’m afther makin’ some aminds fer th’ batin’; will—will ye be Mrs. Dinis now?”

But Alice withered him with a look.

“There’s no need of ill will, my darlint,” he continued nervously; “faix, I know a man that always bates his wife whin his affection overcomes him.”

“You don’t know me!” exclaimed Alice indignantly, red as a poppy.

Denis, not a whit abashed, would have caught her hand.

“There’s nathing in th’ wurrld to kape us from gittin’ acquainted, me love,” he said gallantly.

“Deliver me from a bloody Papist!” said Alice piously, escaping up the stair and leaving Denis grinning openly in his relief, for he had contemplated a noble sacrifice of his own feelings.

Meanwhile Lady Russell and the countess had descended to the drawing-room again to await my Lord of Devonshire’s arrival. Like a rose, Betty had bloomed out with joy, radiant in her beautiful gown, trembling and impatient. She paced the floor, Lady Russell watching her.

“Ah,” she said, “why can I not go at once to the Tower? ’Tis so hard to wait!”

“The duke would go with you,” Lady Russell replied quietly, “and it is best so.”

“He has been so good to me—to us!” Betty murmured, a break in her voice.

She was thinking of her father’s averted face, her brother’s cruelty, her tittering, painted, heartless mother. “He is kinder than my own blood,” she said, “he and the king.”

“He remembered even the pension,” Lady Russell assented, “that good king!”

But Lady Betty scarcely heard her; she strained her ears to catch far other sounds. The rumble of a heavy coach, the closing of a door, steps in the hall. She fled to the top of the staircase, like a startled bird, and looked down; through a window beside her the sun shone in. There were many below, my Lord of Devonshire, a stately figure, the Duke of Ormond, young Sir Edward Mackie, half a dozen gentlemen. But she did not see them; what were they to her?She saw a tall figure, a handsome, eager face, as Clancarty sprang up the stairs.

Lady Betty held out her arms, the sun shining in her face.

“Donough!” she cried, “my own true love!”

THE END