They kept him in prison for over ten weeks, it seems, but Sir Marmaduke did not know what had become of him since then.

The other gentlemen got off fairly lightly with fines and brief periods of imprisonment.  Young Segrave, so ’twas said, had been shipped to New England by his father, but Master and Mistress Endicott had gone beyond the seas at the expense of the State, and not for their own pleasure or advancement.  It appears that my Lord Protector’s vigilance patrol had kept a very sharp eye on these two people, who had more than once had to answer for illicit acts before the Courts.  They tried in a most shameful manner it appears, to implicate Sir Marmaduke and Mistress de Chavasse in their disgrace, but as the former very pertinently remarked, “How could he, a simple Kentish squire have aught to do with a smart London club? and people of such evil repute as the Endicotts could of a truth never be believed.”

All these rumors and accounts had, of course, also reached Sue’s ears.  At first she took up an attitude of aggressive incredulity when her former friend was accused:  nothing but the plain facts as set forth in the Public Advertiser of August the 5th would convince her that Richard Lambert could be so base and mean as Sir Marmaduke had averred.

Even then, in her innermost heart, a vague and indefinable instinct called out to her in Lambert’s name, not to believe all that was said of him.  She could not think of him as lying, and cheating at a game of cards, when common sense itself told her that he was not sufficiently conversant with its rules to turn them to his own advantage.  Her hot-headed partisanship of him gave way of necessity as the weeks sped by, to a more passive disapproval of his condemnation, and this in its turn to a kindly charity for what she thought must have been his ignorance rather than his sin.

What worried her most was that he was not nigh her, now that her sentimental romance was reaching its super-acute crisis.  During her guardian’s temporary absence from Acol she had made earnest and resolute efforts to see her mysterious lover.  She thought that he must know that Sir Marmaduke and Mistress de Chavasse were away and that she herself was free momentarily from watchful eyes.

Yet though with pathetic persistence she haunted the park and the woodlands around the Court, she never even once caught sight of the broad-brimmed hat and drooping plume of her romantic prince.  It seemed as if the earth had swallowed him up.

Upset and vaguely terrified, she had on one occasion thrown prudence to the winds and sought out the old Quakeress and Adam Lambert with whom he lodged.  But the old Quakeress was very deaf, and explanations with her were laborious and unsatisfactory, whilst Adam seemed to entertain a sullen and irresponsible dislike for the foreigner.

All she gathered from these two was that there was nothing unusual in this sudden disappearance of their lodger.  He came and went most erratically, went no one knew whither, returned at most unexpected moments, never slept more than an hour or two in his bed which he quitted at amazingly early hours, strolling out of the cottage when all decent folk were just beginning their night’s rest, and wandering off unseen, unheard, only to return as he had gone.