"Mamma!" says the urchin, pouting his rosy lips, "why don't you play with me?--what are you thinking of?" and a shade passes over that kind face, and she blushes, though there is no one with her but the child, and catches him up and smothers him in kisses, and says "_You_, my darling;" but, nevertheless, I do not think at that moment she was thinking either of her boy or Sir Hugh. And where was Cousin Edward all the time? Why, at that particular instant, sword-point to sword-point with Colonel Bludyer of the Dragoons, slightly wounded in two places--cool and wary, and seeming to enjoy, with a sort of fierce pleasure, such a safety-valve for excitement as a duel with one of the best fencers in Europe. Cousin Edward was an altered man since he stood with the future Lady Horsingham in the moonlight. "An evil counsellor is despair;" and he had hugged that grim adviser to his heart. He had grown handsomer, indeed, than ever; but the wild eye, the haggard brow, and the deep lines about his mouth spoke of days spent in fierce excitement--nights passed in reckless dissipation. He had never forgotten Lucy through it all, but even her image only goaded him to fresh extravagances--anything to deaden the sting of remembrance--anything to efface the maddening past. So Cousin Edward too became a Jacobite; and was there a daring scheme to be executed, a foolhardy exploit to be performed--life and limb to be risked without a question--who so ready and so reckless as "handsome Ned Meredith"? In the course of their secret meetings and cabals he became slightly acquainted with Sir Hugh Horsingham; and, with the inexplicable infatuation peculiar to a man in love, he look a pleasure in being near one so closely connected with Lucy, although that one was the very person who had deprived him of all he valued on earth. So it fell out that Sir Hugh Horsingham and Ned Meredith were supping at the Rose and Thistle in close alliance, the table adjoining them being occupied by those staunch Hanoverians, Colonel Bludyer and Mr. Thornton. "Here's 'The Blackbird,'"* said Cousin Edward, tossing off a huge goblet of Bordeaux, and looking round the room with an air of defiance as he proposed so well-known a toast. Sir Hugh was a man of a certain grim humour, and as he drained his goblet and nodded to his companion, he added, "May the rats dance to his whistle, and the devil--that's _you_, Ned--take the hindmost!" * One of the many passwords by which the adherents of the Chevalier distinguished that ill-fated Prince. Colonel Bludyer rose from his chair, placed his cocked hat on his head, and turned the buckle of his sword-belt in front. "The King!" he shouted, raising his hat with one hand and filling a bumper with the other. "The King!" he repeated, scowling fiercely at his two neighbours. "Over the water!" roared Ned Meredith; and the Colonel, turning rapidly round and mistaking his man, flung his cocked hat right in Sir Hugh Horsingham's face.