“Undoubtedly, my lord,” replied Wilton:  “in such a case, I must ever look upon your wishes as a command.”

The conversation then turned to other and lighter matters, and Wilton amused his friend with the detail of the adventures of the preceding night.

“Sir John Fenwick!” exclaimed the Earl, as soon as Wilton came to the events that succeeded the robbery—­“he is a dangerous companion, Sir John Fenwick!  We know him to be disaffected, a nonjuror, and a plotter of a dark and intriguing character.  Who was the Duke he met with?  Duke of what?”

“On my word, I cannot tell you, sir,” replied Wilton; “I did not hear his name:  they called his daughter Lady Laura.”

“You are a strange young man, Wilton,” replied the Earl; “there are probably not two men in Europe who would have failed to inquire, if it were no more than the name of this pretty girl you mention.”

“If there had been the slightest probability of my ever meeting her again,” replied Wilton, “I most likely should have inquired.  But my story is not ended yet;” and he went on to detail what had occurred during his ride that morning.

This seemed to strike and interest the Earl more than the rest; and he immediately asked his young companion a vast number of questions, all relating to the personal appearance of the gentleman in green, who had been the comrade of his early ride.

After all these interrogatories had been answered, he mused for a minute or two, and then observed, “No, no, it could not be.  This personage in green, Wilton, depend upon it, is some agent of Sir John Fenwick, and the Jacobite party.  He has got some intimation of your name and situation, and has most likely seen you once or twice in Oxford, where, I am sorry to say, there are too many such as himself.  They have fixed their eyes upon you, and, depend upon it, there will be many attempts to gain your adherence to an unsuccessful and a desperate party.  Be wise, my dear Wilton, and shun all communication with such people.  No one who has not filled such a station as I have, can be aware of their manifold arts.”

Wilton promised to be upon his guard, and the conversation dropped there.  It had suggested, however, a new train of ideas to the mind of the young gentleman—­new, I mean, solely in point of combination, for the ideas themselves referred to subjects long known and often thought of.  It appeared evident to him, that the question which the Earl had put to himself in secret, when he heard of his conversation with the man in green, was, “Can this be any one, who really knows the early history of Wilton Brown?” and the question which Wilton in turn asked himself was, “How is the Earl connected with that early history?”

Many painful doubts had often suggested themselves to the mind of Wilton Brown in regard to that very subject; and those doubts themselves had prevented him from pressing on the Earl questions which might have brought forth the facts, but which, at the same time, he thought, might pain that nobleman most bitterly, if his suspicions should prove accurate.