I now recollected the lights seen in the library--the various circumstances which had excited my jealousy--the glove--the agitation of the tapestry which covered the secret passage from Rashleigh's apartment; and, above all, I recollected that Diana retired in order to write, as I then thought, the billet to which I was to have recourse in case of the last necessity. Her hours, then, were not spent in solitude, but in listening to the addresses of some desperate agent of Jacobitical treason, who was a secret resident within the mansion of her uncle! Other young women have sold themselves for gold, or suffered themselves to be seduced from their first love from vanity; but Diana had sacrificed my affections and her own to partake the fortunes of some desperate adventurer--to seek the haunts of freebooters through midnight deserts, with no better hopes of rank or fortune than that mimicry of both which the mock court of the Stuarts at St. Germains had in their power to bestow. "I will see her," I said internally, "if it be possible, once more. I will argue with her as a friend--as a kinsman--on the risk she is incurring, and I will facilitate her retreat to France, where she may, with more comfort and propriety, as well as safety, abide the issue of the turmoils which the political trepanner, to whom she has united her fate, is doubtless busied in putting into motion." "I conclude, then," I said to MacGregor, after about five minutes' silence on both sides, "that his Excellency, since you give me no other name for him, was residing in Osbaldistone Hall at the same time with myself?" "To be sure--to be sure--and in the young lady's apartment, as best reason was." This gratuitous information was adding gall to bitterness. "But few," added MacGregor, "ken'd he was derned there, save Rashleigh and Sir Hildebrand; for you were out o' the question; and the young lads haena wit eneugh to ca' the cat frae the cream--But it's a bra' auld-fashioned house, and what I specially admire is the abundance o' holes and bores and concealments--ye could put twenty or thirty men in ae corner, and a family might live a week without finding them out--whilk, nae doubt, may on occasion be a special convenience. I wish we had the like o' Osbaldistone Hall on the braes o' Craig-Royston--But we maun gar woods and caves serve the like o' us puir Hieland bodies." "I suppose his Excellency," said I, "was privy to the first accident which befell"-- I could not help hesitating a moment.