Tresham made his proposals to Moncada, perhaps in a manner which too
evidently showed that he conceived the high-born Christian was degrading
himself in asking an alliance with the wealthy Jew. Moncada rejected his
proposals, forbade him his house, but could not prevent the lovers
from meeting in private. Tresham made a dishonourable use of the
opportunities which the poor Zilia so incautiously afforded, and the
consequence was her ruin. The lover, however, had every purpose of
righting the injury which he had inflicted, and, after various plans
of secret marriage, which were rendered abortive by the difference of
religion, and other circumstances, flight for Scotland was determined
on. The hurry of the journey, the fear and anxiety to which Zilia was
subjected, brought on her confinement several weeks before the usual
time, so that they were compelled to accept of the assistance and
accommodation offered by Mr. Gray. They had not been there many hours
ere Tresham heard, by the medium of some sharp-sighted or keen-eared
friend, that there were warrants out against him for treasonable
practices. His correspondence with Charles Edward had become known
to Moncada during the period of their friendship; he betrayed it in
vengeance to the British cabinet, and warrants were issued, in which,
at Moncada's request, his daughter's name was included. This might be
of use, he apprehended, to enable him to separate his daughter from
Tresham, should he find the fugitives actually married. How far he
succeeded, the reader already knows, as well as the precautions which
he took to prevent the living evidence of his child's frailty from being
known to exist. His daughter he carried with him, and subjected her to
severe restraint, which her own reflections rendered doubly bitter. It
would have completed his revenge, had the author of Zilia's misfortunes
been brought to the scaffold for his political offences. But Tresham
skulked among his friends in the Highlands, and escaped until the affair
blew over.
He afterwards entered into the East India Company's service, under his
mother's name of Witherington, which concealed the Jacobite and rebel,
until these terms were forgotten. His skill in military affairs soon
raised him to riches and eminence. When he returned to Britain, his
first enquiries were after the family of Moncada. His fame, his wealth,
and the late conviction that his daughter never would marry any but him
who had her first love, induced the old man to give that encouragement
to General Witherington, which he had always denied to the poor and
outlawed Major Tresham; and the lovers, after having been fourteen years
separated, were at length united in wedlock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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