'Saw little,' and the phrase is intended. For often enough of an evening his misery would fetch him out of the coffee houses and lead him like a man blindfold to where her ladyship was accustomed to visit. There he would stand in the darkness of the street until the door opened and Lady Oxford, all smiles and hooped petticoats, would trip gaily out to her chair. But very likely habit--the habit of her conversation and appearance--had as much to do with this particular folly as any despairing passion. How many lovers the wide world over fancy they are bemoaning their broken hearts, when they are only deploring their broken habits! Well, Mr. Kelly, at all events, took the matter _au grand serieux_, and so one night saw her ladyship come out from the porch of Drury Lane theatre in company with Colonel Montague. There is one unprofitable piece of knowledge which a man acquires who has ever had a woman make love to him; he knows when that woman is making love to someone else. Lady Oxford's modest droop of the head when the Colonel spoke, her shy sidelong smile at him, her red lips a trifle parted as though his mere presence held her in a pleased suspense--all these tokens were familiar to Mr. Kelly as his daily bread, and he went home eating his own heart, and nursing a quite unjustifiable resentment against Nicholas Wogan for that he ever saved the Colonel's life. It did not take Kelly long to discover that his suspicions were correct. A few questions to his friends, who for his sake had kept silence, and the truth was out. Lady Oxford's constancy had lasted precisely seven weeks before the Whig colonel had stepped into the Jacobite parson's shoes. Mr. Kelly put his heart beneath his heel and now stamped her image out of it. Then he went upon his way, and the King's business took him to Avignon. CHAPTER XII THE PARSON MEETS SCROPE FOR THE THIRD TIME, AND WHAT CAME OF THE MEETING It was early in the year 1722 when Mr. Kelly came to _la ville sonnante_, and took a lodging at L'Auberge des Papes in the Rue des Trois Faucons. He brought with him a sum of 5,000_l_. collected in England, and this sum he was to hand over to a messenger from the Duke of Ormond, who was then at Corunna in Spain, and, what with his disbursements in the purchase of arms, and the support of Irish troops, was hard put to it for money.