This project of Jenny’s contrivance was so simple, and seemed so easy, that it completely took possession of my mind, and for a time I could think scarce of anything else. For to liberate my lord would be so great and wonderful a thing. Why, these people who act can assume, and make others assume, any appearance they please; had I not seen Mr. Hilyard under a dozen disguises? It would be nothing for Jenny to make up first Frank, and then the Earl, into another person altogether.

‘Nay,’ said Mr. Hilyard, ‘but you forget that when I have deceived you, it is first through your imagination the cheat is wrought, so that I made you think of a physician first, before I assumed the bearing and guise of one; and of the blacksmith, John Purdy, before I became that man. And so with the stage. Before Jenny steps across the boards —— majesty in her face, sovereignty in her eyes, authority in her carriage —— you have been prepared to expect a Queen; and, lo! she stands before you. But without this preparation and talk disguise is not so easy, and Jenny’s scheme will want, methinks, the help of twilight. Then, indeed, it might be safely tried. Mr. Frank’s resemblance to his brother being so great that he might, by candle-light even, pass very well for the Earl. But he gets daily worse instead of better.’

We began then to consider the strange nature of Jenny’s power over him, so that what she should command, that he would straightway do; and, whereas at Dilston it was in a trance that he did these things, now it was with all his wits awake, and of his own free will —— a mere slave to the will of a woman.

‘In this respect,’ said Mr. Hilyard, ‘he only follows many illustrious examples of antiquity —— Solomon among others.’

‘Did she give him a love-potion? or did she by some other magic and witch-like art steal his affections?’

‘Nay, Miss Dorothy,’ said Mr. Hilyard, ‘you understand not the strength of love nor the power of Jenny’s beauty.’ She had bright black eyes, red lips, and a rosy cheek, with black curls and a tall, good figure; and, in a word, the girl was well enough, and might have pleased some honest fellow of her own rank and birth. ‘She is,’ continued Mr. Hilyard, ‘a most beautiful and bewitching creature; witty and roguish. You must not suppose because a gentlewoman seldom or never loves a man below her own degree (yet Venus, the great goddess, loved Adonis, the shepherd boy), that therefore a gentleman cannot love a woman of inferior birth. Why, Boaz, a great prince, as one may suppose, loved Ruth, who seemed to him a simple leasing-maid, and King Cophetua loved a beggar-maid. There are other examples too many to enumerate. As for Jenny’s witcheries, I believe not in them any more than consists in her bright eyes and smiles.’

‘But, oh! Mr. Hilyard,’ I exclaimed, ‘remember what she did at Dilston and what I saw, although she deceived me, lying without shame.’

‘Truly,’ he said, ‘I forget not. It is strange to think upon. There was once, as is related, a learned scholar of Oxford who fell into a kind of melancholy, and conceived a disgust at the company of his fellows. Wherefore he presently left his college and his companions, and, going away into the fields, fell in with a band of gipsies, and continued with them all his life, asking for nothing more than they could give him —— namely, to dwell in the open air, to sleep in tents, to endure the extremes of weather, to live hard, and to have no discourse on books, religion, philosophy, or any of the subjects with which he had formerly been conversant. But to one seeking him in this strange retirement, he said that the gipsy race was possessed of many and marvellous secrets, some of which had been imparted to himself, and that, without any agreement or covenant with the devil, they could so cheat the eyes and brains of men and women as to make them do what they wished, see things invisible, hear voices afar off, and believe what they were told to believe. So Frank Radcliffe, being asleep, seemed awake, and knew not afterwards what he had said or done. Yet no devilry.’

Who can understand these things?

‘Why,’ I asked, ‘seeing that you are so great a scholar, cannot you cure Frank of this madness?’

He shook his head.

‘Because when all the medicines for the cure of love have been applied, there still remains the lover. Why, to love as Frank is in love is to be strong, to be a man, on whom the remedium amoris is but a sham. Any weak man may think himself in love with a girl of his own degree; but this kind of love, as when one hath loved a mermaid, or sea-dragon, and another a fairy, and another a black woman, is not to be cured, and means great strength of will and passion unconquerable. From ordinary passions a strong man like myself keeps himself free; especially when, Miss Dorothy,’ he looked at me with a soft suffusion of his eyes, ‘when a man is prevented from loving other women, because he is always in presence of one so godlike, that the rapt senses cannot endure to think upon a creature of lower nature.’

‘But,’ I said, leaving the subject of love’s madness, ‘Jenny’s project is so easy, that it seems ridiculous to hope that it hath not been guarded against.’

‘The greatest things,’ he said, ‘are sometimes effected in the easiest manner. The mathematician of Syracuse fired a fleet with burning-glasses. But he did not invent the burning-glass. And I remember the egg of Columbus.’

I went to see Frank. He had a lodging near Jenny in Red Lion Street just now; the weather being so hard, he stirred not abroad at all, but sat beside the fire all day, suffering grievously from his cough.

‘Cousin Dorothy,’ he said, pleased indeed to see me (but his cheeks were thin and hollow and his shoulders rounded, so that it was sad to look upon him), ‘I heard that you were in town; I would to Heaven it were on a more pleasant errand! I cannot get abroad to see anyone, not even my brothers in the Tower and in Newgate, poor lads! nor my sister-in-law, the Countess, who hath too much to think of, so that she cannot be expected to come here. Off hood and cloak, cousin, and draw a chair near the fire, and talk to me, because I may not talk much.’

Another fit of coughing seized him and shook him to and fro, so that at the end he lay back among his pillows exhausted.

I told him what news I had to tell, and gave him such comfort as I had to give, which was not much; yet I could tell him that I had seen my lord, and how he looked, and how he had hopes from his noble friends and cousins.

‘As for me,’ he said, ‘what use am I in the world to anybody? And at such a juncture to be thus laid by the heels and unable to stir! Ah, Dorothy! it is weary work lying here whither no one comes, save Mr. Hilyard, who is very good, and keeps up my heart; and every day, never failing, the best, the kindest, the most beautiful of her sex ——’

‘You mean Jenny Lee,’ I said.

‘Whom should I mean but that incomparable creature? Dorothy, I should be the happiest of men, because the divine Jenny hath promised to marry me as soon as I am recovered of this plaguy cough. I know not yet where we shall live; she will leave the stage, which is the scene of her triumphs, but yet no fit place for a gentleman’s wife; we will go so............