“He begged me to elope with him, and afterward, he promised, he would make it up with my father, who would not stand against the match once he saw the brilliance of my new state. My governess uncovered the scheme and could have thwarted it. But I begged her, and Charles charmed her and finally bribed her into silence with the gift of a ruby pendant that we later learned he had pilfered from his mother’s box. And so she abetted our scheme and kept my father ignorant much longer than would otherwise have been possible.
