As soon as she had the paper in her hand, Harry stepped back to the Chaplain’s room, opened the secret cupboard over the fireplace, burned all the papers in it, and, as he had seen the priest do before, took down one of his reverence’s manuscript sermons, and half burnt that in the brazier.  By the time the papers were quite destroyed it was daylight.  Harry ran back to his mistress again.  Her gentlewoman ushered him again into her ladyship’s chamber; she told him (from behind her nuptial curtains) to bid the coach be got ready, and that she would ride away anon.

But the mysteries of her ladyship’s toilet were as awfully long on this day as on any other, and, long after the coach was ready, my lady was still attiring herself.  And just as the Viscountess stepped forth from her room, ready for departure, young John Lockwood comes running up from the village with news that a lawyer, three officers, and twenty or four-and-twenty soldiers, were marching thence upon the house.  John had but two minutes the start of them, and, ere he had well told his story, the troop rode into our court-yard.

CHAPTER VI.

The issue of the plots.—­The death of Thomas, third viscount of Castlewood; and the imprisonment of his viscountess.

At first my lady was for dying like Mary, Queen of Scots (to whom she fancied she bore a resemblance in beauty), and, stroking her scraggy neck, said, “They will find Isabel of Castlewood is equal to her fate.”  Her gentlewoman, Victoire, persuaded her that her prudent course was, as she could not fly, to receive the troops as though she suspected nothing, and that her chamber was the best place wherein to await them.  So her black Japan casket, which Harry was to carry to the coach, was taken back to her ladyship’s chamber, whither the maid and mistress retired.  Victoire came out presently, bidding the page to say her ladyship was ill, confined to her bed with the rheumatism.

By this time the soldiers had reached Castlewood.  Harry Esmond saw them from the window of the tapestry parlor; a couple of sentinels were posted at the gate—­a half-dozen more walked towards the stable; and some others, preceded by their commander, and a man in black, a lawyer probably, were conducted by one of the servants to the stair leading up to the part of the house which my lord and lady inhabited.

So the Captain, a handsome kind man, and the lawyer, came through the ante-room to the tapestry parlor, and where now was nobody but young Harry Esmond, the page.

“Tell your mistress, little man,” says the Captain, kindly, “that we must speak to her.”

“My mistress is ill a-bed,” said the page.

“What complaint has she?” asked the Captain.

The boy said, “The rheumatism!”