Within a few hours after his liberation, he was on his way to England, in company with Lady Arabella. He had devoted the whole period of his imprisonment to writing letters to her, and venting curses against Scotland. Margaret Williamson was forgotten, in the hope of finding in the arms of Lady Arabella a panacea for his wrongs, and a solace of his sufferings--for it is as true as it is remarkable, that the truly wicked are the most querulous of justice, and the most impatient of her retributions.
Nothing was, for a long time, heard of Sir Willoughby; but she whom he had ruined and deserted, remained to the inhabitants of Edinburgh as an object of their pity, and an example to their children. Margaret bore a son, and Janet Hunter soon died of a broken heart, for the loss of Adam. Margaret was thus left to the charity of a world which is often moved to pity only through the selfish conceit of a comparison between the alms-giver and the alms-receiver, and begged her bread from the doors of the inhabitants of Edinburgh.
Now, it was five years after the transactions I have detailed, and when King James had been nearly as long seated on the throne of England, that Lionel Apsley, a gentleman in the confidence of the king, arrived in Edinburgh. He was observed to make inquiries after a person of the name of Margaret or Peggy Williamson, who, he was informed, resided in a small ground room in the White Horse Close, in the Canongate of Edinburgh. A man who was standing at the top of Leith Wynd took him to Margaret's residence. Upon entering the humble abode, he found the object of his search making porridge for the son of the English knight. Lionel entered into conversation with Margaret, and endeavoured to draw her into a recital of the story of her life; but she evaded, though in the gentlest manner, his efforts, stating, that her griefs and her secrets were her own, and that the making the one known would not make the other unfelt. She had been much annoyed, she said, by the impertinent interrogations of gossiping people, who often insulted her by withholding their charity when they found their love of gossip ungratified.
Lionel made many visits to Margaret, and, by degrees, succeeded in breaking down her reluctance to speak of herself. He told her, that he had been commissioned to visit her, and had come down to Scotland for the sole purpose of seeing and serving her, and pledged his honour, as a gentleman, that the only use he would make of her information would be in turning it to her advantage. He was evidently already well acquainted with many parts of her story; but the chief object of his inquiry related to the written promise of marriage which, he had been given to understand, she had got from Sir Willoughby. Margaret, at first, would not admit that any such document existed, and appeared to feel acute pain from Lionel's urgent solicitation to see it. Overcome, at last, by his importunity, she went to a little chest, which was secreted in a recess dug into the wall of her apartment, and having drawn it out, and opened it with trembling hands, she took from it the small, but curiously folded piece of paper, still retaining the fragrance with which Sir Willoughby's gallantry had invested it. With conclusive sobs, Margaret looked at the paper, and handed it to the stranger. Lionel read it, and found it to contain the following words, written in a small affected character, which bore evident traces of having been penned by the writer when in a state bordering at least on intoxication. "Sir Willoughby Somerset, of Somerset Hall, knight of the noble order of--(here there was drawn a rude image of George and the dragon)--doth, by these lines, declare that he doth truly intend to wed Margaret Williamson, and this he promises to do on the faith of a knight of the order to which he belongs. Given at the Hunter's Rest, this 26th day of April, in the year of the succession of King James to the throne of England."