M. de Rondiniacque had little reason to hope for anything better than a second rebuff if he pursued the Prince to plead Royston's cause in the garden. He therefore sat him down in the hall where they had left him, to ponder miserably enough the mischief he had done. But scarce, being wont at times to speak to himself aloud, had he cried: "Mort de ma vie! but if poor Royston suffer for this, I will forswear all and turn monk" (wholly forgetting, as he was at times not a little used, the grave cause of his expatriation), when there ran lightly out from the shelter formed by the hanging that was before the door that leads to the kitchens, who but little Prue?  
Now, it was not far from this door that Mr. Bentinck had stood while he read the letters brought by the courier, and it was at this point that Prudence now paused, and stooping, raised from the floor a sheet of thin paper, twice folded, which it soon appeared she had from her cover observed that gentleman to let fall. Holding this behind her back, she addressed M. de Rondiniacque.
 
"'T is a mighty fine business, Master Foreigner," she said. "See how you have embroiled everything with this love of kissing! It is like enough you have by this means cost an honest man his life."
 
"'T is all true that you say," replied he; "yet I cannot tell how you should know it, if you have not wilfully listened since ever your mistress sent you from this place."
 
"I came between that door and its curtain," she replied, "in the same moment that Sir Michael did ask the Prince the reason of his churlishness. So it was not long before I heard good Mr. Royston tell how he did use the sword for Sir Michael's daughter. And I were a ninnyhammer indeed, if I could not from that tell the rest of the tale. Therefore, I say again, that 't is all your fault, ill man that you are!"
 
"It is mine, indeed," said De Rondiniacque sadly.
 
Then did Prudence pull a very long and solemn face.
 
"Do you repent of your sins?" she asked.
 
"Most heartily I do," he answered.
 
"And would you atone?" she continued.
 
"Most gladly—but how?" he asked.
 
"Will you leave kissing forever," she demanded with great severity, "if I do put you in the way to make amends?"
 
"Ay, that, and more!" he cried, in reckless penitence, "do but show me the way."
 
"Nay, softly," she answered. "'T will take three at least, and one of them a woman of a very pretty wit, even if I be not mistaken, to undo the mischief one witless man can work with this same foolish kissing."
 
"Have done with your gibes!" said De Rondiniacque angrily. "I would not kiss you again if you asked it." For which discourtesy Mistress Prue deferred her revenge, thinking, as she has told me, that it was but his sorrow and zeal of penitence made the gentleman speak so unmannerly.
 
"Hark then to me," she said. "As I stood there by the door, where I could hear all and see not a little, after that the Prince had said they would walk a turn in the garden, and while they were taking away poor Mr. Royston a prisoner, the sour-faced man in black drew the Prince aside so that they almost touched the curtain that hid me. And there for a little space they stood, talking soft and low. What is he—the surly one, I mean, that had the papers?"
 
"That is Mr. Bentinck," replied De Rondiniacque, with some impatience. "Well, what said they?"
 
"The Prince was minded that Sir Michael spoke truth, but the man in black that they must use all means to lay hands on the priest; he said, too, that in his letter was a paper with every mark of this priest's person, so as it might be his very portrait cunningly painted; and he said that he cared not a groat for Sir Michael, nor for poor Mr. Royston, so he might come at the priest. They are mightily in love with this priest, Mr. Mar-all, and I do think——"
 
"Did you hear his description?" interrupted De Rondiniacque. "Did Bentinck read it to the Prince?"
 
"They should do that in the air, said the Prince. And as they went I saw how this Mr. Benting, as you call him, did search among the papers in his hands as if he had lost one of them. And 't is little wonder," added she, "that he could not find it, for His Highness's great boot had it fast under heel the while they talked; and to that heel it stuck for three good strides of their passage to the other door. See the mark of his tread." And she showed him the paper she had found, with its impress of a muddy heel. "And I do think," said Prudence, "that it is, perhaps, by the grace of God, that same paper that tells of this priest's person."
 
"I see little good in it for us, even if it be so," said he; "but let me read." And, leaning over her as she unfolded the paper, he put an arm round her waist. But Prue twisted sinuously from his grasp.
 
"Nay, Mr. Mar-all," she cried, "I will read it myself. I can read a bold hand o' write near as well as print." And then, after peering closely for a while at the crabbed, slanting, and unfamiliar characters upon the paper, she said dolefully: "Alack-aday! 't is an outlandish thing, and will not be read. I vow 't is French lingo!"
 
M. de Rondiniacque snatched the paper from her hand.
 
"I will read it for you, my pretty one," he said.
 
"I am not that, thank Heaven!" says Prue, bridling, as he hastily scanned the writing.
 
"What! not pretty?" he asked, toying with her as it were by rote of habit, while eyes and mind were both upon his reading.
 
"That I hope I am," replied Prue, "but not yours. Your love is unlucky." Then, as she saw that she was like to get little sport while he still would read: "Can you read French, sir?" she asked.
 
"What else?" he answered. "Do I not speak it since I was weaned?"
 
"Ay, to speak it," said she; "that I can understand, being natural-like to a poor thing hearing no better from a child. But to read it—'t is wonderful indeed. Come, do it into English for me." Then, hearing a footstep without, she cried: "Have you mastered it? For I think he returns," and as M. de Rondiniacque looked up from reading the last words, she snatched from him the paper and hid it in her bosom.
 
The next moment Mr. William Bentinck entered the hall, walking slowly and casting his eyes from side to side in anxious search of the floor for the very thing she had hidden. When he perceived that he was not alone,............