During those times I was making an honest effort to do the right by this beautiful child-woman and to save my own honor unsullied from the sin of making her unhappy for life through winning her love beyond her power to recall; and my effort toward the right, like all such efforts, achieved at least a part of the good for which I strove.

One day after our visit to Betty’s room, Frances asked me to take her to see George.  I suspected that she had seen him frequently, but was not sure.  I objected, but changed my mind when she said:—­

“Very well.  I prefer going alone.”

I shall not try to describe the scene between them.  We found George alone, and she sprang to him as the iron springs to the magnet.

I knew then, if never before, that there could be no happiness in this world for her away from him.  Whether she would find it with him was impossible for me to know, but I saw that she was in the grip of a mighty passion, and I could only hope that a way would open to save her.

Hamilton’s fortunes would need to mend a great deal before he could or would ask her to be his wife, for now he was at the bottom of the ladder.  He lost no opportunity to impress this disagreeable truth upon her, but his honest efforts to hold himself aloof only increased her respect and love for him.  It not only convinced her that notwithstanding his past life, he was a man of honor capable of resisting himself and of protecting her, but it gave him the quality so irresistible to a woman—­unattainability.

Taking it all in all, my poor beautiful cousin was falling day by day deeper into an abyss of love from which she could in no way extricate herself.  In short, level-headed Frances had got far out of plumb, and, though she struggled desperately, she could not right herself, nor could any one help her.  I fully realized that the small amount of self-restraint and passivity she still retained would give way to disastrous activity when the time should come for her to part with George and lose him forever.  But I could see no way to save her unless I could induce George to leave England at once, for good and all.

At times the fates seem to fly to a man’s help, and in this instance they came to me most graciously that same day in Whitehall, in the person of my friend the Count de Grammont.

Soon after leaving Frances in the maids’ apartments, I met that most interesting gentleman roue, his Grace de Grammont, coming from the king’s closet.  As already stated, he had been banished from the French court by Louis XIV because of a too great friendliness for one of the king’s sweethearts, and was living in exile in London till Louis should forgive his interference.  The French king really liked De Grammont and trusted him when his Majesty’s lady-loves were not concerned, so the count had been sent to England in honorable exile, and was employed in certain cases as a spy and in others as a means of secret communication between the French king and persons connected with the court of Charles II.