“I cannot say, my lord,” replied Wilton, “that he took any part whatsoever in the business.  In the matter of setting free Lady Laura, he showed himself more afraid of these good gentry than fond of them, and after their arrival, he ran away and hid himself.”

“And yet,” said the Earl, “he’s a rank Jacobite, too.  But that does not signify.  He’s an excellent creature, and the greatest rogue in Christendom.  All this chocolate comes from him; there’s nothing like it in Europe.  Won’t you take some, Wilton?  I forgot to ask if you had broken your fast.”—­Wilton replied that he had not, and the Earl made him sit down and follow his example, of writing letters and taking his chocolate at the same time.  One of the notes, however, which the Earl himself wrote, attracted his secretary’s attention in some degree; for as soon as Lord Byerdale had concluded it, he rang the bell and gave it to a servant, saying, “Take that to Captain Churchill’s lodgings.  You know where he lives, just in Duke Street.  Wait for an answer.”

The man went away, and business proceeded.  At the end of about an hour, however, the servant returned, saying, as an excuse for his long absence, that Captain Churchill was in bed when he reached his house, and that his valet had refused to wake him.

“When he did wake, however, my lord,” added the man, “he said he would not detain me to write a note, as I had been kept so long already; but would wait upon your lordship at the hour you named.”

Shortly after the return of the servant, the Earl took up his papers, and prepared to proceed to Whitehall.  Before he went, however, he paused opposite to the table at which Wilton was writing, and looking at him for a moment with a smile, he said,—­

“You are surprised, Wilton, and have been puzzling yourself with the reason why I take so much more interest in you than I used to do.  I will explain it all to you, Wilton, in one word.  I did not at first know who you were.  I now do, as I have before hinted; and my conduct to one whom I believed to be a natural son of the Earl of Sunbury, and who was forced upon me somewhat against my own will, was of course very different from that which I show towards a young gentleman of a high and noble family, not very distantly related to myself.—­Now are you satisfied?”

And with these words he left the room.  Yet, strange to say, Wilton, though not a little surprised at what he heard, knew the Earl of Byerdale, and was not satisfied.  But at all events, the words which had passed set his mind at ease, in regard to Laura.  He now felt that he was committing no breach of confidence; that he was pursuing no presumptuous suit, in seeking the object of his dearest and his brightest hopes; that though fortune might still be adverse, and such wealth might never be his, as to place him in a position equal, in that respect, to herself, yet he had every right and title to strive for her hand with the noblest of the land.