The Loyalists, Volumes 1-3 | Page 9

a pile of
ill-constructed greatness, which, in its fall, often endangers the stability
of the throne.
To this vain, ambitious man, practised in all the smooth graces and
insidious arts of a court, the aspiring, but frank and honourable Neville,
more enlightened, equally engaging, and animated by purer motives,
was an object both of envy and of fear. He scrupled not to lament the
indignities which the declining King suffered from his former
cup-bearer, who had danced himself into the highest honours England
could bestow, and now basely turned from the setting orb from which
he derived his borrowed splendour, to worship the rising sun; nay
worse, who attempted to alienate the duty of an amiable Prince from

his sick and aged father. Neville was earnest in his expressions of
disgust at such baseness; and the minions of the Duke did not suffer
these hasty ebullitions of virtue to die unreported. The sarcasms soon
reached his ear with magnified severity; and the ruin, or at least the
removal of his growing rival became necessary to his own security.
Chance favoured the Duke's designs. A gentleman in his suite was
assassinated in the streets of London when returning from a
masquerade, and the murderer was seen in the act of escaping, not so
near the body as that his person could be identified, but plain enough
for the beholders to ascertain that he wore the very dress in which
Neville appeared that evening. The implacable enemy he had
indiscreetly provoked possessed the royal ear; and though a jury could
not have found in such a coincidence sufficient grounds to indict
Neville, the Duke easily procured a royal warrant for his immediate
arrest. "My own heart," here observed Allan, "and my confidence in the
justice and good sense of my country, prompted me to brave my
accusers; but I had now a convincing proof that with all my
acquirements I still wanted knowledge of the world. I, however,
possessed the invaluable blessing of a sincere, wise, and prudent friend,
one who reads man in his true characters, and deals with him cautiously,
instead of believing him to be the ingenuous offspring of simplicity. In
early youth this friend saved me from a watery grave, and he is now the
guardian of my fame and fortune. In conformity to the advice of the
kind Walter de Vallance (for that is his name), I yielded to the storm;
instead of resisting its fury, I chose this retreat; and since my innocence
as well as my guilt admitted not of proof, I offered to submit the
dubious question to the arbitration of the sword, and called on
Buckingham to meet me in single combat, or, if he declined a personal
engagement, to select any one of noble birth and breeding for his proxy,
who should accuse me as the author of Saville's death. Walter de
Vallance carried my proposal to the young King, who at first yielded to
my suit, but, on consulting his chaplains, judged this to be an unlawful
manner of deciding disputes in a Christian country. I am now informed
that by my flight I have erased those impressions which my former
behaviour had made in my favour. Many think I was the murderer; and
the vast power my adversary possesses at court is rendered still more

dangerous to my life and fame, by the pains that have been taken to
prepossess those who would have to decide upon my fate. But should
the death of my declining brother call me to act in the same sphere with
my proud oppressor, and put my life into safer guardianship, I will
burst from the retreat which I sometimes fear was unadvisedly chosen,
and either fall by an unjust sentence, or vindicate my innocence. I will
no longer, like the mountain-boar, owe a precarious existence to the
untrodden wilds in which I hide from my pursuers."
Even now, when the universal passion for luxury and self-enjoyment
renders prosperity so alluring, subdues our native energies, and makes
us the puppets and slaves of fortune, there are some lovely young
martyrs who immolate prudence on the shrine of love. It may easily be
imagined, therefore, that this heroine of a simpler age, instead of being
discouraged by the difficulties her Allan had to encounter, loved him
with more intense affection. He an assassin!--the eye that flamed
defiance on an ungrateful vicegerent of the King, when every knee but
his bent in homage, could never pursue a court-butterfly, or guide a
murderous dagger to a page's breast, while indignant virtue pointed the
sword of justice to a public delinquent. Isabel agreed that it was wrong
in Evellin to fly; but when, on her lonely pillow, she cast her thoughts
on the alternative, and contemplated her beloved, in the hands