Page:Ethel Churchill 2.pdf/211

Rh untruly set down to the account of fear, or whether the late excitement made her present quiet insipid,—it would be difficult to say; but she was in a fret and fever to further prove, what she called, her devotion to the House of Stuart. Lord Marchmont would have expatiated for months to come on his own prudence in refusing her admission into his house, could he have heard only a tithe of her daily discourse. Fortunately, two servants she had brought with her, were devotedly attached to their mistress; and the others only entering her apartments at rare intervals, did not understand her mystic allusions; and she now, more than ever, affected to veil her meaning under the mysterious phraseology so much adopted by the Jacobites. One morning Ethel was surprised by a summons, unusually early, to her grandmother's room. She found her in the greatest bustle: two of the maids unpacking a multitude of trunks; while she walked up and down, now telling them where such a satin was to be