text:  He then let me into his own secret with an occasional episode of the secrets of others--the substance of the whole being that a counter revolution was preparing in France; that after conducting the correspondence in London for some time he had been ordered to carry a despatch of the highest importance to the secret agency in Paris; and that the question was now between love and honour--Mariamne having by some unlucky hint dropped from her father received intimation of the design and putting her _veto_ on his bearing any part in it in the most peremptory manner