“Nearer to the perils of the law, for high treason,” answered her husband, in a low, dejected voice. “It is of that I have been anxious to speak with you all the time.” “Then speak at once, for God’s sake, dearest Jasper! speak at once, and fully, that we may know the worst;” and she showed more composure now, in what she naturally deemed the extremity of peril, than he had looked for, judging from the excitement she had manifested at the mere listening to the story of another’s perils. “Say on,” she added, seeing that he hesitated, “let me know the worst.” “It must be so, though it is hard to tell, Theresa; we—myself, I mean, and a band of the first and noblest youths of England—have been engaged for these three months past in a conspiracy to banish from the throne of England this last and basest son of a weak, bigoted, unlucky race of kings—this cowardly, blood-thirsty, persecuting bigot—this Papist monarch of a Protestant land, this James the Second, as men call him; and to set in his place the brave, wise, virtuous William of Nassau, now Stadtholder of the United Provinces. It is this business which has obliged me to be absent so often of late, in London. It is the failure of this business which has rendered me morose, unkind, irritable—need I say more, you have pardoned me, Theresa.” “The failure of this business!” she exclaimed, gazing at him with a face from which dismay had banished every hue of color—“the failure!” “Ay, Theresa, it is even so. Had we succeeded in liberating England from the cold tyrant’s bloody yoke, we had been patriots, saviors, fathers of our country—Brutuses, for what I know, and Timoleons! We have failed—therefore, we are rebels, traitors and, I suppose, ere long shall be victims.” “The plot, then, is discovered?” “Even so, Theresa.” “And how long, Jasper, have you known this dreadful termination?” “I have foreseen it these six weeks or more. I knew it, for the first time, to-day.” “And is it absolutely known, divulged, proclaimed? Have arrests been made?” she asked, with a degree of coolness that amazed him, while he felt that it augured ill for the success of his iniquitous scheme; but he had, in some sort, foreseen her questions, and his answers were prepared already. He answered, therefore, as unhesitatingly as if there had been one word of truth in all that he was uttering. “It is _all_ known to one of the leading ministers of the government; it is not divulged; and no arrests have been made yet. But the breathing space will be brief.” “All, then, is easy! Let us fly! Let us take horse at once—this very night! By noon to-morrow, we shall be in Plymouth, and thence we can gain France, and be safe there until this tyranny shall be o’erpast.”