We had not taken fifty steps till Tyrconnel gave his horse to a boy and came running after us, infinitely more eager to retract the withdrawal than he had been to withdraw his proposal. He protested by all things holy his total disbelief in the scandalous story, and begged Frances not to remember what he had said in jealous anger.
"Be careful, my lord. Do not make another mistake," said Frances, laughing in his face. "I did visit the Old Swan this morning, and the king told me less than thirty minutes ago that Master Hamilton lives there. It is said by those who claim to know that he is in France, but they must be wrong, and I must have seen him. The king says I did, and he can do no wrong. I neither deny nor affirm, though I fancy that my real friends will not believe me guilty of the indiscretion."
"I do not believe it," protested Tyrconnel. "I know you are all that is good."
"Thank you, my lord," returned Frances. "If I am good, I remain so for my own sake. As for the gossips, they may think what they please, talk about me to their hearts' content, and go to the devil for his content, if he can find it in them."
Seeing that Tyrconnel wanted to speak with Frances alone, I drew to a little distance for the purpose of giving him an opportunity to press his suit, in which I so heartily wished him success.
It is uphill work making love to a woman whose heart is filled to overflowing with love of another man, and I was sorry for poor earnest Tyrconnel as I watched him pleading his case with Frances. He was not a burning light intellectually, but he entertained a just estimate of himself and was wise enough not to take any one of the daintily baited hooks that were dangled before him by some of the fairest anglers in England. But manlike, he yearned for the hook that was not in the water.
I followed Frances and Tyrconnel back to the palace, and when they parted at the King's Street Gate, he asked me to go with him to the sign of the King's Head and have a tankard of mulled sack and a breast of Welsh mutton right off the spit.
Tyrconnel's speech was made up of an amusing lisp grafted on the broadest Irish brogue ever heard outside of Killarney. It cannot be reproduced in print; therefore I shall not attempt it. But it was so comical that one could never rid one's self of a desire to laugh, be his Lordship ever so earnest. As a result of this amusing manner of speech, his most serious words never produced a thoughtful impression on his hearers. It is said that the king once laughed when Tyrconnel, in tears, told him of the death of his Lordship's mother.