When the time came to take leave, Esmond marched homewards to his lodgings, and met Mr. Addison on the road that night, walking to a cottage he had at Fulham, the moon shining on his handsome serene face:—­“What cheer, brother?” says Addison, laughing:  “I thought it was a footpad advancing in the dark, and behold ’tis an old friend.  We may shake hands, Colonel, in the dark, ’tis better than fighting by daylight.  Why should we quarrel, because I am a Whig and thou art a Tory?  Turn thy steps and walk with me to Fulham, where there is a nightingale still singing in the garden, and a cool bottle in a cave I know of; you shall drink to the Pretender if you like, and I will drink my liquor my own way:  I have had enough of good liquor?—­no, never!  There is no such word as enough as a stopper for good wine.  Thou wilt not come?  Come any day, come soon.  You know I remember Simois and the Sigeia tellus, and the praelia mixta mero, mixta mero,” he repeated, with ever so slight a touch of merum in his voice, and walked back a little way on the road with Esmond, bidding the other remember he was always his friend, and indebted to him for his aid in the “Campaign” poem.  And very likely Mr. Under-Secretary would have stepped in and taken t’other bottle at the Colonel’s lodging, had the latter invited him, but Esmond’s mood was none of the gayest, and he bade his friend an inhospitable good-night at the door.

“I have done the deed,” thought he, sleepless, and looking out into the night; “he is here, and I have brought him; he and Beatrix are sleeping under the same roof now.  Whom did I mean to serve in bringing him?  Was it the Prince? was it Henry Esmond?  Had I not best have joined the manly creed of Addison yonder, that scouts the old doctrine of right divine, that boldly declares that Parliament and people consecrate the Sovereign, not bishops, nor genealogies, nor oils, nor coronations.”  The eager gaze of the young Prince, watching every movement of Beatrix, haunted Esmond and pursued him.  The Prince’s figure appeared before him in his feverish dreams many times that night.  He wished the deed undone for which he had labored so.  He was not the first that has regretted his own act, or brought about his own undoing.  Undoing?  Should he write that word in his late years?  No, on his knees before heaven, rather be thankful for what then he deemed his misfortune, and which hath caused the whole subsequent happiness of his life.

Esmond’s man, honest John Lockwood, had served his master and the family all his life, and the Colonel knew that he could answer for John’s fidelity as for his own.  John returned with the horses from Rochester betimes the next morning, and the Colonel gave him to understand that on going to Kensington, where he was free of the servants’ hall, and indeed courting Miss Beatrix’s maid, he was to ask no questions, and betray no surprise, but to vouch stoutly that the young gentleman he should see in a red coat there was my Lord Viscount Castlewood,