Enguerrand de Joncelles—Monsieur le Vidame de Joncelles, as he preferred to be called—was new to courts. To the court of Whitehall, la cour de Witalle he had it, he was yet altogether a stranger.

From the noble monotony of Joncelles, the great poverty-stricken chateau which raised its pepper-box turrets above meagre apple orchards, a league south of Caen, to the excitement of the Louvre and Versailles; from the rigidity of the maternal rule at home (in her retirement, Madame de Joncelles, a confidant and friend of the late Queen Mother of France, had never compromised on matters of discipline, and had cherished theories on the education of young men) to complete emancipation—here had been steps high enough to upset the balance of any quick-blooded and good-looking youth of eighteen. But the little Vidame had found his feet, as the saying goes, with astonishing ease, as soon as the austere old lady, departing for a better world, left him to face this one by himself.

The new mourning had scarce had time to be fitted to his comely figure before the whole youth himself had become a different being. There are some whom a single glass of wine intoxicates; Enguerrand de Joncelles was intoxicated at the very first sip of life.… Such a flutter of silk and curls; such constellations of eyes, brilliant or melting or mockingly challenging; such lightning of wit; such whispers, such sighs! In one day he had learned to return, with interest, an oeillade that, within the precincts of Caen Cathedral, would have made him drop a modest lid—and set him dreaming for a week. Within a very little while more he had mastered the art of capturing a soft hand and holding it hidden in tender pressure, the while presenting a decorous front to stately company. He had also learned to look down in the right measure of disdain upon the burgher; to bandy, in all delicacy, audacious pleasantry with his equals on the Grand Staircase of the Louvre, or in the GalÉrie de l’Œil-de-Boeuf. He could whip out his new-mode small-sword with as swift a grace as the best noted ruffler. He was able to be more obviously dazzled by the splendour of the Roy-Soleil than many a past-master sycophant—withal cultivating a fine insensibility of outward aspect, keeping the delicate beauty of his features set as in a fine white mask, his voice low-toned—only now and again permitting the wide-pupilled black eyes to betray by a flash the constant alertness of the inner mind.

These demure airs gave a singular piquancy to the boldness of his words and deeds, one which was not without its special effect in that court of solemn sham and wearisome etiquette. Heaven only knows where the precious only son of Madame de Joncelles had found such sudden knowledge of the world, such astuteness and such recklessness combined. It was a merciful Providence that spared his pious mother the sight of the ultimate blossoming of her carefully pruned young tree!

Attached (together with his sister, Madame de Mantes, a noted beauty of Versailles) to the train of Madame Henriette d’OrlÉans, on the occasion of that princess’s first journey to England since the happy restoration of her royal brother, he now was ushered to the court of Whitehall. What the apt youth here saw and learned filled him deep with surprise—a surprise, however, which he was careful not to betray. Beyond doubt it was a merry place, this court of Charles—if its methods were a trifle astonishing. Enguerrand was not one who would let pass a single opportunity for self-instruction, and now and again, despite his impassive attitude where the natural acuteness of his wits failed him, he condescended to ask for information.

He was in a questioning mood, this night at Whitehall, when, for the first time, he was admitted to the King’s more private circle. By good adventure, he found himself beside a gentleman who seemed to possess an intimate knowledge of the royal ways as well as an amiable readiness to impart it. This was an elderly little man of the name of Petherick, who once, evidently, had been handsome, and was still À la mode. As Enguerrand was to learn later, Mr. Petherick justified his established position at Court by a notable ingenuity in discovering fresh sources of amusement for the easily wearied Charles. Now the acute person’s eye rested critically upon the elegance of the foreign boy; his Majesty liked new faces and new fashions, and his Majesty especially liked the French.

“Aye,” said Petherick, as if pursuing his thought aloud, “the King is vastly fond of your country, Vidame—and of your countrywomen, just now. See—that divine dark creature that came with Madame Henriette; I’ve laid a wager, to wit, that her Royal Highness will have to leave her lady-in-waiting behind, when she returns to France.”

“Sir—you mean, I see, Madame de Mantes,” said Enguerrand, coolly. “My sister.”

“Monsieur de Joncelles…? Ah, of course, Madame de Mantes is married. And M. de Mantes?”

“Say was married—happily widowed within a few months,” said the little Vidame, with elaborate coolness. And from his post slightly in the background he gazed at the brilliant royal circle and singled out the familiar dark curly head, the peach-like cheek, the childlike lustrous eyes with quite a new interest.

Mr. Petherick had too good an experience of the Court not to be more than ever gracious to a newcomer, who proved to be the brother of a beauteous sister.

Following the direction of the Vidame’s eyes, he pointed out the personalities of major importance—handsome Castlemaine, sullen and aggressive to-night; and fair Stewart with her childish face and her studied coldness of demeanour, and put Master Enguerrand au courant of some spicy snippets. Buckingham proclaimed himself by his magnificence, his insolence, and his gaiety.

“But pray,” put in the Vidame, “who may the tall, dark gentleman be, who sits in such silence behind his Majesty, and who, even when the King speaks, seems to have forgot how to smile.… He has a handsome presence—although no longer young, at all.” (Thus, the superb arrogance of his own springtime!) “Do you mark, Monsieur Petherick, how my little sister keeps seeking his notice with languishing eyes—aye, even with his Majesty’s own gaze upon her … the perverse one! Pray, who is the gentleman?”

“How!” cried Mr. Petherick, “a whole week already in Whitehall, and not yet acquainted with the Rakehell? Why, sir, it is our King’s own familiar, an old comrade of the wars and of exile. His Majesty can do nought without my lord Viscount Rockhurst—my merry Rockhurst, he has dubbed his lordship, in a raillery, you will understand, of that countenance which keeps its gravity through the maddest freak. And mad he can be, sir; hence that nickname of Rakehell, which no doubt has astonished your French elegancy.—Nay, but in truth there is an eye that wanders, as you say, prodigious languorously upon my lord Constable!” Mr. Petherick went on, narrowing his own watchful gaze: “I congratulate you, Vidame, upon your fair sister … yet, I trust she is as wise as she is fair.… Aye, you say true, and your young wits are quicker than mine; the Lord Constable—my lord Rockhurst is constable, I should inform you, of his Majesty’s Tower and captain of the Yeomen of the Guard—and in sooth the one gentleman about the presence who would dare, and for the mere deviltry of it, to place himself in rivalry with the King … to nip the quarry, as it were, from under Old Rowley’s nose!”

“Old Rowley?” questioned Enguerrand, his dark eyes flashing wide. He had a side smile, as he spoke, for his sister and her astuteness. He could trust Jeanne to be wise.

Petherick coughed behind a lean hand.

“Oh, a name, sir. A name, by which his Majesty’s intimates dare, now and then, to call him—ahem! when not in the presence—a foolish habit. I know not how the absurdity slipped from my tongue.”

“Nay, neither do I,” said the little cool Vidame.

His glance wandered back with sharper set curiosity to the royal circle. Charles had a languid hand amid the curls of the proud, fair beauty, who sat, erect and triumphant, beside him; the young courtier’s thoughts ran back to his own gorgeous monarch, set up as upon an altar, never to be approached save with bent spine, with double-distilled compliments, spoken of with awe, in whispers, as befitted his august essence. Le Roy Soleil.… Old Rowley!

Jeanne de Mantes had a pretty, round face with a pointed chin, wide-set, very innocent dark eyes, piquantly contradicted by the dainty, wicked mouth, by every vivacious art and grace that proclaimed one deeply learned already in the art of pleasing. Charles, in truth, looked more often to-night at his sister’s pretty dame d’honneur than at the blond, chill beauty who sat at his right hand; and presently, as he looked, the King’s sardonic face relaxed into a smile. He leaned forward and addressed the lady in French:—

“I hear mounts and marvels, madam, of your skill upon the guitar. Will you not pleasure us with some sweet air of your fingers?”

Instantly every glance fell upon the Frenchwoman; and she, with a start, brought her eyes from their absent fixing of the Lord Constable to the visage of the King. She fluttered. She smiled:—

“Your Majesty commands? ’Tis scarce worthy of such ears.”

Curiously enough the guitar had been brought to-night, by the wish of Madame herself, who deemed that his Majesty might be pleased to hear it. She stretched out a white hand, half turning the head with its wreath of soft black curls toward the young man behind her:—

“My brother!… Vidame!”

It was a languid, sweet call, like the pipe of a waking bird, which augured well for the louder warble. The Vidame was alert; in a twinkling he was at his sister’s side, presenting the guitar with the arrogant grace peculiar to him.

But Charles, full of that curious interest in small things which seems so marked a characteristic of sovereigns—their lives being by fate ordained in view of wide issues—signified by a gesture his desire to examine the new-fashioned instrument, and the Vidame approached the presence.

The silent, grave personage whose seat behind the King, apart from the table, threw him into shadow, looked at the young man at first with indifference; then, of a sudden, piercingly.

With one arm thrown familiarly on the back of the royal chair, he had shown himself mighty indifferent either to the challenging glances lavished upon him, or to the pleasantries that circled round the table, the most audacious winged with a subtle flattery for the royal attention. For the monarch himself, who dropped him ever and anon a confidential word, Lord Rockhurst had but a perfunctory, if quite courteous attention. A deep mood of abstraction had held him. But, now, his interest was vivid, unmistakable. He stared at the Vidame; and, as he stared, surprise seemed to pass into distaste, almost into pain.

The lad paused in his advance, as if held by that intent gaze. Then he tossed his black locks; a sudden fire of resentment leaped and died in his eyes, and with crimson cheeks he came swaggering round the table, and dropped on one knee before the King. Charles glanced curiously from him to his Lord Constable; Rockhurst’s gaze was still resting inscrutably upon the lad.

“Odd’s fish, my lord Rockhurst!” cried the King. “You look at the pretty boy as if you saw a spectre!”

“Even so, your Majesty.”

The sonority of the voice, the strange words, fell impressively in that light atmosphere. Again Enguerrand’s black pupils shot fury. Rockhurst, with the same absorbed air, laid his fingers on a slender chain that hung round his neck, and drew from his breast a gold locket.

Opening and holding it in his hand so that none could view it but himself, he appeared to be contrasting some portrait concealed in it with the countenance of the still kneeling boy.

“Ha!” cried the King, “take heed, ladies; for, as we live, the mystery of my lord Rockhurst’s locket is at length to be solved. A spectre, did you say, my lord?”

The Lord Constable closed the locket with a snap, slipped it back among the laces on his breast, and turned easily upon the King; his frown had vanished.

“Nay, no spectre, sire; the merest passing fantasy!”

Charles was shaken with laughter, a noiseless laugh which scarcely wrote itself upon his melancholy features.

“Methought, from your lenten face,” said he, “that you were struck by some memory of past misdeeds.”

“Your Majesty mistakes. No memory; but a warning!”

The King looked puzzled; then, with his usual distaste for prolonged discussion, made a gesture as if he would put the matter on one side.

“But that locket?” And with the words Madame de Mantes flung out a small olive finger. Since English etiquette, it seemed, permitted every one to speak, then she would speak. The matter had become all at once of palpitating interest to her. The portrait in the locket—it was evidently a portrait—he had smiled at it. And such a smile! She took a vow that one day this man should be made to smile thus on her.

“True, true,” said Charles. “Let us see into the secret at last, my merry Rockhurst.”

The Lord Constable flung himself back into his chair.

“Nay, sire,” said he, and the deference of the words became mockery in view of the attitude of the speaker. “Your Majesty has every jurisdiction over me—my goods, my services, my life, are irrevocably yours to dispose of; but my thoughts are mine own. And this locket belongs to my most secret thoughts.”

Curiosity flickered once more for a moment in the royal eye. But through drooping lids the Lord Constable’s gaze was steel-like, and the King shrugged his shoulders with the foreign gesture that cleaved to him through life.

“God’s mercy, my lieges, that ye keep your thoughts to yourselves, at least!” he cried, with an assumed rueful air; “for, between your lost goods and your past services, our exchequer has enough to meet.” He stretched out his hand for the guitar as he spoke, and twanged ignorantly at the strings.

Enguerrand rose with a grin. Charles’s ingratitude toward his ruined loyalists was no secret in France, and the cold gibe was after his heart.

“Then we shall not see the locket?” cried the Frenchwoman, disappointment ringing through her fluted tones.

“How the bird twitters!” cried Charles, good-naturedly. “Nay, my dear, curiosity was ever fatal to your sex. Let us remain in paradise for an hour or so. Sing!”

Jeanne de Mantes had a voice that matched her looks: small, insinuating, sweet; creeping into favour, rather than storming it; docile to a thousand modulations and graces. Now it was the very gaiety of music; anon just a hint of pathos; and every word distinct as a dropping gem. And this accompanied with here a dreamlike fixity of gaze, there an arch roll of the eyes; here again a punctuating dimple, a flash in the peachy, dark face of the whitest teeth in all the world; there a drooping of the lip that positively demanded the consolation of a kiss.

Charles had not been so stirred to enthusiasm for a considerable time. He called for a second ditty, and yet another. This last had an audacious lilt, with a refrain so infectious that the royal listener began to hum it midway and sadly out of tune. Toward the last verse, however, under strokes waxing ever smarter, a string broke with a plaintive sob.

“Ah, diable!” involuntarily exclaimed the singer; and his Majesty laughed delightedly. Then his face changed again as he noted the compressed lips of Lady Castlemaine and the glacial anger of Miss Stewart. He rose and broke up the circle. His arm on Rockhurst’s shoulder, he was about to retire, when he paused and hummed a few notes of the last song once more.

“A linnet,” he said, “a positive linnet! Odd’s fish! but we’d have her pipe to us when we might give her our whole attention.”

He spoke low, and flung back a look, that held a certain apprehension, toward Miss Stewart. This latter stood very erect, and bore a studied air of indifference.

“If your lordship will look to it—” he went on, then broke off petulantly under the glance that Rockhurst turned upon him. “Good lack, man! I forget how much of the Puritan there is in thee at times.”

“Your Majesty,” said Rockhurst, in his most stately manner, “will find with ease an apter messenger.”

“Aye,” said the King, cynically. His narrow, dark eye roamed a moment about the room, then rested reflectively upon the fair mask of Enguerrand’s face. The boy turned quickly. Charles raised a beckoning hand.

“Vidame,” said the King, “a word in the hollow of your ear!”

The two drew apart, while Rockhurst moved away to the door to await the King’s pleasure. Charles rejoined him, laughing.

“Faith, if I had such subjects as my cousin Louis, I should be well served. Yes, ’tis your French finger you want for true lightness of touch. My honest Britons are all thumbs. The pretty singer’s brother.… Her own brother, no less! ’Tis a positive little Satan!”

“Aye,” assented Rockhurst, briefly.

The two went down the corridor in silence; then Rockhurst spoke with some abruptness.

“Your Majesty,” said he, “has before this, I think, found it add to his interest in … bird-catching that he should not be the only fowler in the field.”

“How now?” said Charles, halting. The group of attendant pages halted likewise at the end of the gallery.

“I have thought,” said Rockhurst, steadily, “I, also, that I should like that linnet to sing to me.”

Charles frowned; but his favourite pursued unmoved:—

“As I have only my beaux yeux, as we used to say abroad, to stake against your Majesty’s overwhelming attractions, I should be flattered indeed, however, were you to have me banned as a marauder.”

Touched upon the string of his humour, Charles was ever easily appeased. The very impudence of his grave constable’s proposal tickled him. It was not the first time that they had found themselves opposed in rivalry, though scarcely ever before so avowedly. On the last occasion (the King remembered this pleasantly) Rockhurst, for all his beaux yeux, had been notoriously displaced; and this, doubtless, was a little stroke of revenge. That was Rockhurst’s way.

“Beware of boasting, my lord Constable!” he exclaimed banteringly.

They were on the threshold of the apartment. Rockhurst made a deep congÉ.

“I never boast, as your Majesty knows. But your Majesty was wont to love a fair wager.”

Charles’s smile widened. He nodded assent, and Rockhurst pursued after a moment’s reflection:—

“Will your Majesty stake the payment of all the arrears due to my yeomen’s company that the linnet’s first song will not be for me? I would wager in return their immediate settlement, out of my own estate, unless your Majesty would impose on me any other stake.”

“Admirable!” said the King. “Yet we would have a more immediate, a more personal, token of victory—if we succeed against your beaux yeux,” he put in with a little mockery, “and that is, in addition to the paltry coin, a view of the contents of that locket, my merry Rockhurst.”

Rockhurst hesitated, then bowed. “So be it, sire,” said he.

And hereupon Charles retired, laughing, in cynical anticipation of a good stroke of business. That ever-present question of arrears of pay was a persistent annoyance to the royal conscience.

II
WHITEHALL STAIRS

“Little Satan”—bestowed from lips royal in terms of favour, the nickname cleaved congenially to Enguerrand—entered, into the rÔle of King’s Mercury with all the verve expected of him. But he was considerably surprised at the manner in which his embassy was received. To place the most unworthy motives invariably foremost was, he flattered himself, to display a thorough knowledge of woman. He had yet to learn the thousand sensibilities that distinguish even the frail of that elusive sex from the unscrupulous gallant.

As he paused on his announcement, fully expecting to descry in the new recipient of the royal favour at least as much gratification as he himself experienced in being singled out as confidential messenger, he was met by a sudden pouncing movement, expressive only of wrath, by a dark look, actually by a flush.

Had Jeanne de Mantes ever blushed? It might be a matter of doubt. But she could colour high with displeasure; and very becoming it was.

“What, sir?” she cried. “I cannot have understood aright. Is this the Vidame de Joncelles, the French gentilhomme, the servant of Madame Henriette de France—is this my compatriot, my own brother, who comes to make me such a proposition?—It is really not to credit one’s ears!…”

Brother and sister faced each other, strangely alike now in their anger: nostrils quivering over fierce, quick breaths, black eyes flashing into black eyes.

It was the Vidame who could scarce credit his ears. Here was he, the messenger of the King, come to open before one whose devouring ambition, he believed, if anything, exceeded his own, a perspective of boundless possibilities—and he was thus received! He sat before her in the small parlour allotted to her in Whitehall,—an exiguous rounded corner room overlooking the river,—his mouth opened in astonishment, deserted for the nonce by all his pert airs of assurance.

“Nay, Jeanne,” he said at length, “keep this pretty scene for his Majesty, if you will; or rather,” he amended, restored by the sound of his own glib speech, “take my advice, and hold your fits of virtue as cured and over, once for all, for they say that King Charles becomes very easily ennuyÉ. For, with me, whom do you expect to take in?”

Whereupon, at a tangent, Madame de Mantes flew into a new rage.

“And it is this little man who is my brother!” she cried, clasping her hands and surveying Enguerrand from head to foot, with flashing fury; “this is the child who knelt beside me at our mother’s knee!”

She thrust out a lip of utter contempt: “Take thee in? Thou—thou little withered fruit … a stone inside, hard skin without; what art thou to me?”

“What am I to thee—Jeanne? To-day,” he cried, “the stepping-stone to thy fortune, if thou wilt only see it! Now listen to me.”

But even as he spoke, of a sudden his anger cooled before the expression of her face. What if she was in earnest, what of his fortunes then? It was no time to quarrel. He caught his sister round the waist and advanced his lips toward the smooth cheek. But a masterly slap met the endearment.

“I’ll be no stepping-stone to you, nor creature of the English King,” Jeanne announced, half laughing, half crying. “There’s better in London, Master Enguerrand.”

He looked at her with wicked eyes, his face whiter than usual against the three scarlet stripes.

“You’ve had a visit this morning before me!” he cried suddenly; then, with a diabolic flash of intuition, he recalled the long, soft looks she had cast upon Lord Rockhurst.

“A visit?” said the Frenchwoman, swinging herself upon her heel. “Why, yes, that might well be.” She had a private smile, as to the memory of something singularly pleasant.

“I warrant me that it is your purpose to visit before long that interesting pile they call the Tower of London. Have a care, ma soeur,” and his trembling lips could scarce articulate the sneer,—had he not hated that man at very first sight,—“it is there, they say, that heads are lost in England!”

“Out of my room!” she ordered.

He laughed in what was almost a convulsion of rage. To what post, to what favours, might he not have aspired, with such a beginning! Meanwhile it is always the messenger of unwelcome news who bears the blame. MalÉdiction! His hand on the door-latch, he sent his last shaft with deadly purport to wound:—

“O Jeanne, and I had never thought thee the woman to submit to a rival! Call to mind, ma toute belle, milord’s smile as he gazed at the face in the locket.”

Madame de Mantes heard the furious laughter echo down the passage as the door closed. She stood in the middle of her little room nibbling at her finger. ’Twas true! He had smiled at the locket, and with what tenderness! Ah, that was very different from the mocking twist of the lips with which he had wittily courted her only an hour ago. How! a king was to be sacrificed to him, and the man dared to haggle over the full surrender of his heart! ’Twould be monstrous!

“Ah, there’s my Little Satan,” said the King. But his long, gloomy face relaxed into no mirth: he had had a tedious morning, and of all things Charles could least endure tedium. The lady who had been first in favour so long that her chain had become well-nigh as heavy as that of matrimony itself, had made him such a scene as his own good and faithful queen would never have permitted herself to make. And another lady, whom for some time the volatile royal fancy had pursued in vain, had shown herself more hopelessly obdurate than usual. Between chiding Palmer and elusive Stewart, Charles was as near ill-humour as his easy temper would allow—and he was therefore, characteristically, ready for any diversion to this unwonted hue of his sky. The sight of the little Vidame’s pallid, handsome face at the end of the audience room put him in mind at once of the whim he had indulged in overnight for the lady of the guitar; a linnet that trilled, a little quail for roundness and compactness.

For an entremet, according to the new-fangled French jargon of banqueting, Madame de Mantes was certainly not a dish to be despised; and, to add spice to it, there was that presumptuous fellow’s wager. Actually a wager!—Those arrears of pay had been forced upon the royal memory altogether too often of late. So, with a gesture, Charles waved his usual circle aside; and those that formed it saw, with astonishment and the virulent spite of the courtier, the King withdraw with the unknown French boy into the embrasure of the windows overlooking the Thames.

Some bethought themselves that his Majesty had noticed the creature already on the previous night; and whispers began to circulate.

One inventive personage declared he knew (upon positive authority) that the little Vidame had come on an important secret mission of the French King anent the necessity of Romanising the English Church without delay. “Vidame, mark you, is an old French ecclesiastical title,” he was good enough to explain. “He holds his lands in feu from some mighty Archbishopric—formerly a Vidame was a kind of ecclesiastical marshal—does not this furnish food for reflection, my lords? But—” “Pooh,” cried an airy gallant (who had a French tilt to his moustache), “our good Dorset has ever Rome in his head. Why, man, a Vidame and his Bishop, it is well known, always hate each other cordially as ever fox and wolf; ’tis always between them, who shall have the fattest share of church booty! Nay, then, are you so simple? Have you looked at that smooth cheek, those rich curls? Why, ’tis the most piquant matter—some Fair Audacity in disguise! No more Vidame than your lordship’s self; but, believe me, some cosy little chanoinesse, sheltering her gentle lapses under the comfortable wing of Mother Church.”—“Hearken to Follett and his follies!” interposed a third, a frank-faced youth, the sap of whose English generous common-sense had not yet been withered by courtly poisons. “Nay, neither envoy nor canoness, my lords, but as tough a youth as ever I came across. I tried a fall with him, in the Cockpit,—having heard him brag of a trick of Breton wrestling,—and by my soul, the lad is steel and bow-string; he had me on my back in a twinkling and jeered at me till, for a moment, I saw him in red! But I like the lad; he has mettle, for all his whey face. Heard you not what his Majesty calls him: his Little Satan!—Old Rowley hath some bit of devil’s work for him this morning. And that’s the nut of the mystery.”

“Well, Vidame,” said the King, as soon as they were out of earshot, “let us now arrange the hour when we are again to hear your melodious sister warble, as though she were a bird and found our dull skies as bright as those of France.”

Enguerrand’s lips trembled. His pale cheek grew paler still.

But he had by no means been prepared to reveal his diplomatic failure. His plan was to temporise, in the hope of eventual success. But his sensitive acuteness nosed a trail of bitter temper under all Charles’s urbanity; and, flustered, he hesitated a second. The King drew his great eyebrows together.

“Madame requires pressing, it seems. She is perhaps hoarse to-day.”

Enguerrand foresaw how, in another moment, by a gesture of that languid white hand, the insignificant personality of Jeanne—and with it his own equally futile existence—would be swept from Charles’s horizon. Biting his lips, he cast about, but vainly, in his own brain, for a word which would keep the King’s fickle humour at least a little longer on the same bent.

Could she but be brought to take her golden chance, Jeanne would hold her own against any adversary but relentless Time—Enguerrand knew his sister well enough to feel certain of that. So promising an opportunity, and to see it wrecked by a mood of monstrous folly!

His eye wandered desperately from the King’s face, whereon was writ coming dismissal, to the dull prospect which lay beyond the window: a leaden river under a leaden sky—merely to see the huddled, cloaked wayfarers in the boats gliding past made one shiver.

Suddenly the boy’s eyes narrowed; he drew close to the window, peered eagerly down; nay, he was not mistaken! Yonder, indeed, went Jeanne … Jeanne and her woman, and at the water stairs a boat lay in wait for them. In a flash he understood; he had been right in his surmise! Moved by an inspiration born of the very genius for intrigue, he cried eagerly, but under his breath, arresting the King’s attention even as he was moving wearily away:—

“Nay, your Majesty, my sister is not hoarse, at least to my knowledge—I found her not in her apartment, and now I perceive the reason. The lady is not hoarse … yet seems like to become so presently! How will her sweet notes sound, I wonder, after her water journey, this bitter day!”

“Odd’s fish!” said the King. “What prate is this, sir?”

Yet, curiosity drew him to approach the window in his turn. Through the Whitehall water gate, down the King’s own stairs, a figure, wrapped in a rose and grey mantle daintily held up to show little close tripping feet, a small dame was picking her way down the miry steps. Behind her a waiting woman in russet carried what appeared to be a lute case. Charles turned a look, half quizzical, half interrogative, upon the Vidame.

“And is indeed that pink-and-grey bird our fair singer of last evening?”

“Even so, sire,” said Enguerrand, bowing low to conceal the agitation of his countenance.

“Satan, my little friend,” said the King, more genially, “can you inform me whither she may be winging her flight, from the very stairs sacred to our own passage? Not that such ordinance can be enforced upon birds.”

“I notice, your Majesty,” said Enguerrand, now turning candid eyes full upon the King, “the skiff is heading down river. I believe your Majesty’s Tower lies somewhere in that direction.”

“Ha!” said the King. His deep eye lightened for a second ominously. But as rapidly as it came, anger vanished from his countenance; and with it the last traces of his moody, weary humour. “Odd’s fish!” he ejaculated, “I had forgot! To the Tower, say you, Vidame? Nay, then, that minds me my Lord Constable and myself had a merry wager touching a singing-bird. Ma foi, he is early with the decoy and the lime twig!”

He paused. The Vidame looked at him in astonishment—a king to wager with a subject! A king—and to let himself be crossed in his pleasure and to find in the circumstance food for indulgent laughter. And the man lodged so conveniently in his Tower! Joncelle’s vindictive young soul had been all afire to see the Lord Constable consigned to one of his own cells. If the Tower of London was not Charles’s Bastille, for the disposal of inconvenient courtiers, where was the use of it? If a king made no use of his prerogatives, where was the use of royalty?—The Vidame had yet much to learn.

Pulling his full underlip between finger and thumb, Charles stared alternately out of the window at the picture of grey river, vanishing skiff, and brooding sky, and at Enguerrand’s delicate white face. Beneath the boy’s tensely still attitude it was easy to divine quiver of nerves, fierce eagerness.

“Why, now,” said the King at last, somewhat maliciously, “we are not too proud to be taught by our subject. Our Lord Constable and ourself had, as I said, a wager who should capture the linnet’s next song. My Lord Rockhurst is an old soldier: he trusts no one. We sent a messenger: we therefore stand to lose.”

The colour rushed to the Vidame’s face. He dropped his lids to hide the tears of mortification that sprang to his eyes. Had the fate of some battle, the issue of some diplomatic mission, been at stake, he might almost have felt less keenly the reproach of his failure. To be King’s Mercury, to set off so gaily, on so high a flight, and fall so quickly, so hopelessly—no situation could have been more exquisitely painful to the Vidame de Joncelles. (Poor, pious mother! could she have read, that moment, into the soul of her son, she might well have thought that the house she had so carefully kept swept and garnished was indeed invaded by the seven devils.)

The King’s glance, however, was not unkind. “Nay, now,” he continued, in ever more good-natured tones, “all is not lost yet. This infamous Rockhurst of ours laid too tempting a stake that I should let him carry off the prize without an effort. What say you, Little Satan? Have you a mind to see the Tower? Your great father has been pretty busy there these five hundred years. It should be of interest to his little son.”

He flung out his long, careless hand, as he spoke, toward the boy, and Enguerrand, dropping on one knee, kissed it with sudden passion. Something about that hitherto dormant part of his young anatomy, his heart, was stirred. He had felt himself dominated by that very carelessness and good nature against which but a little while ago he had inwardly railed; caught a hint of a truer royalty in this careless King than in all the pompous tyranny of his cousin of France.

Whether the inexplicable Stuart charm, which Charles, black-visaged, saturnine, cynical as he was, possessed no less than his romantically beautiful father and his handsome, winning brother of York, had seized the more potently upon Enguerrand’s nature that had hitherto been brazened in self-conceit and self-interest against all external influence, the fact was that in that touch of his lips, the Vidame de Joncelles devoted himself to a master.

Charles stepped back into the room, called up his gentleman-in-waiting, and gave instant order for his barge. As he turned pleasantly then to receive the congÉes of the dismissed audience, a fine-looking young man strode quickly into the room, made his way up, and bowing so low that his profuse, fair ringlets fell in a cascade on either side of his cheek, presented a letter for the royal hand. Enguerrand, standing close, heard the messenger’s murmured words.

“From Miss Stewart, your Grace.”

The whole circle stepped back and grew wide while the King read. And many a look of envy was cast upon the newcomer as Charles, thrusting the sheet into his breast, turned a complacent countenance upon him.

“Vastly well, Sir Paul,” said Charles, with a little nod.

The young man visibly swelled with triumph. The Vidame’s busy brain worked at high speed: Miss Stewart? That was the great fair girl who gave the King such cold return for his notice last night.… Rumour about Court had it, as Enguerrand knew, that she was playing a high game.…

As a man might look upon one who threatened to rob him of a mistress’s smile, so Enguerrand glared at the messenger who had evidently succeeded in his task. But his own hour was not yet over. In high good humour, Charles beckoned him again to his side.

“Come,” said he, “or we shall be too late. Tide waits not for kings; and linnets will sing only when the mood takes them.”

Enguerrand, seated in the royal barge, felt his heart swell with pride. He was alone in attendance, save for the tall officer of guards, whose face, impassive and dark as bronze over the folds of the red horse cloak, looked forth with the indifference of the man under orders, upon this last whim of the master. The French boy’s blood was tingling with excitement. The raw airs, the bleak aspect of the waterway, the shadow of the towering masonry from which they were just emerging, dark with its story of royal tragedy, failed to depress a spirit otherwise susceptible to physical impressions.

His failure, after all, had become more profitable than success. He was on sudden terms of intimacy with a monarch whom he was eager to serve; and in conjunction with the Stuart himself, he was about to inflict at least discomfiture upon the man for whom at first sight he had conceived hatred.

He was still child enough, moreover, to feel a titillating sense of gratification in watching the skill and vigour of the royal watermen, the like of which was undreamed of on French rivers; in feeling that it was partly for him these stalwart backs bowed in rhythmic measure, that the oars swept the waters, green now to his closer vision; that it was, in a way, before his own passage that the craft hastily opened out to leave a wide channel, and that every head was uncovered.

Charles’s face had fallen into its habitual expression in repose, of somewhat bitter melancholy; and the journey was traversed in silence, until, just in front of the archway of London Bridge, the sweep of the tide, which had been for some time at the full, began to tell decidedly against them. The barge came almost to a standstill.

The King roused himself from his abstraction and flung a rueful smile over his shoulder at Enguerrand: “Said I not well? The tide waits not for kings.”

The watermen caught the phrase, and as if stung in their pride of office fell to at the oars with a fury which sent the sweat rolling down each weather-beaten cheek.

“Our wily friend,” proceeded Charles, “chose his hour with judgment. The bird has as easy a flight as the dove to the ark. We stand to be beaten, after all, by my Lord Constable.”

Beaten! Never, if his oarsmen died for it. The brawny arms shot out in unison; the backs bent and straightened with the rage of defiance; they shot the bridge in triumph, the contentious waters vainly swirling and lapping against the sides of the barge.

As they emerged into the gentler stream beyond, there was a moment’s pause, and every man of the crew, dashing the salt sweat from his eyes, turned involuntarily toward the royal visage. The slight smile of approbation on Charles’s lips seemed ample guerdon for the feat; indeed, as in the case of most saturnine countenances, its momentary relaxation had a rare charm. They fell upon the oars again, and presently the mighty pile of the Tower seemed to engulf them into its dark shades.

If Whitehall, stained with the blood of a king, shed a gloom about it, even while holding the most irresponsible court in the world, what sinister shroud enveloped these walls to every imaginative mind. The stones of the dungeon, tradition said, had been first cemented in lime and blood; and enough blood had since been poured out within those gates to stain the moats forever crimson.

The water gates swung back, and the King’s barge glided in. Charles’s face bore an air of pleasant anticipation, unwonted good fortune. He was certain to be amused, whichever way events turned; certain at least of some novel sensation.

III
THE LINNET’S SONG

Jeanne de Mantes sat sidewise in the deep window-seat of the parlour in the constable’s Tower, her dark eyes roaming about her with a curiosity not unmixed with a kind of awe. The room, dark with ancient oak to its blackened ceiling, with its huge depth of wall, its aspect of strength, silence, antiquity, resembled no apartment that she had ever entered. True, she had never penetrated into the Bastille, and true, she was here of her own free will and free to leave at her caprice; yet a small shiver crept over her. There seemed to her something ominous, something fated, about the place. All said and done, it was a prison. What should bring hither those who lived for freedom and joy?

She glanced almost timidly at the man who stood, one elbow propped on the embrasure, gazing down at her with inscrutable yet perhaps mocking eyes. He matched his Tower, she thought, in the something dark and melancholy which, though he might smile and court, yet remained as undisturbed as the sombreness of the room by the leaping firelight or the early spring flowers on the table.

Their glances met. In the light that fell upon her from grey skies and grey wall, the texture of her face showed flawless; richly coloured, at once soft and firm, it glowed like some southern fruit out of the cold setting. Her lips were parted: forgotten, in the momentary feeling of strangeness, all the modish airs and graces of the Louvre. She looked like a child, Rockhurst thought. He smiled at her, suddenly, kindly; sat down on the window-seat beside her and took her little amber-tinted hand in his.

“This is a rude place for such a one as you,” he said; “and you look about you like some creature caught against its will. Nay, you shall but sing me a song, and take your flight again forthwith, if you so wish it.”

All the woman in her awoke, petulant, displeased. Chivalry in love, a man who could desire and yet spare—that was not at all to her French taste. She drew her hands quickly from his and tossed her head.

“How so,” she cried in her pretty foreign English. “Fortwit’ after my song? But now, at once, if you prefer! Your lordship is quick tired!”

She sprang from the seat as she spoke. But he, stretching a lazy arm, caught her by her yielding waist.

“I said, if you wish it, Mignonne. In love I am no highwayman, but a courteous dealer.”

She feigned to struggle, brushing his cheek with her curls; then gave him all the candour of her eyes and the glint of a smile from her wicked lips; upon which, suddenly, he kissed them.

“Ah! highwayman, after all!” she mocked.

He drew her close to him, laughing silently.

“Milord Constable,” said she, “if one of your soldiers down there should chance to look up, it is all over with … your reputation.”

Again he laughed, struck by the audacious humour of the soft creature within the circle of his arm.

“Madame,” said he, then, with unexpected gravity, “my soldiers have long ceased to look up. My reputation is too well established to be worth looking to.”

Piqued, she thrust him from her with a quick gesture. It is one thing to be quickly conquered; it is another to be classed among the easy conquests.

“You’re insolent, milord!” she said, with out-thrust lip.

“My pretty one,” he answered her, “anger becomes you vastly; but as for myself, I have a preference for the dimpled smile.”

He let his arm drop from her carelessly. She stood looking down at him, fascinated, taunted, uncertain.

“Believe me,” he went on in the same tone, half condescending, half caressing, “I am much older than you; I have had experience—life becomes much pleasanter, its few good hours vastly easier of discovery, if we agree to take certain things for granted. And, as example is ever better than preaching, let us put my theory in practice. I, now, take it for granted,” as he spoke his fine teeth flashed a second in a wider smile, “that you are all virtue, yet that you harbour for my unworthy self an amiable passion which excuses, nay, commands, a gentle lapse. You on your side take it for granted that I am consumed with an ardour unknown hitherto in my existence. Come, does not that place us instantly on a delightful footing? And this being so: why, then, come back to my side.”

She palpitated between fury and the extraordinary attraction which drew her to him. Her breast heaved, her eye first lightened, then melted. She took an unwilling step, then paused. Almost a sob rose in her throat. In another moment she would have flung herself on his breast, as he sat awaiting her with that air of amused certainty that was in itself at once part of his fascination for her and an insult to her every instinct of pride, when suddenly she perceived that his eye had become fixed and distant. The insolent wretch had already dropped her from his thoughts; she was not worth to him even that pause of expectation!

Staring through the south window, up the river toward that gloomy bridge through the arches of which she had come to him, his attention was absorbed, his glance had gained a hawk-like keenness; the lines of his face were set. Whatever he beheld without, it was something that evoked far keener interest in him than the woman who had come to his call, in preference to that of a king. This was too much!

“Adieu, milord,” she cried in a high, strained voice. But, womanlike, she must see what it was, without there, on that hideous river, that he was looking at.

The royal barge, with its standard and pennants, its flash of scarlet and the long swing of red-and-gold oars, was already masked under the shadow of the battlements; nothing but the long stretch of water, dotted with black craft, met the searching of her angry eyes.

What is it, she asked herself; his fair one, in some well-known boat? Ah! the owner perhaps of that face in the locket, which even his King was not to see? What in the name of all decent pride was Jeanne de Mantes doing here? Yet even as she moved again to leave him, with what dignity she might, the incomprehensible being turned to her again—turned with a smile so winning, a glance so warm and caressing, a voice so tender, that the young woman lost her footing on her momentary plane of dignity, and found herself floundering again between a tearful desire for surrender and that hot anger which only a real love is able to kindle.

“How now! Adieu, say you? From your lips, sweet, that is a word I hope never to hear.”

“Why should I remain, milord?” she said feebly. “You care not to keep me.”

“I care so much that I will not let you go.” He came after her quickly into the room. “Why, you foolish child, how can you escape from the Tower so long as its constable means to hold you? Do you not know, I have but to call a word, and the drawbridge is raised, the portcullis dropped over the waterway—that I have the right of imprisonment here, that there are secret places where I can hide my wilful prisoners? Nay, sweet one, are we not well together here?—You shall sing to me!”

Stirred with an emotion which, hitherto only playing with life, she had never known before, she murmured, blushing and trembling:—

“Sing! Eh, mon Dieu, you hold to it, then?”

“Why,” he answered her, “was it not singing that you caught my heart?”

Delicately flattered, she suffered herself to be led to a cushioned seat by the deep hearth; and she was already stretching out her arms to receive the guitar, when something in his air struck her quick apprehension, something at once of eagerness for her compliance, yet of indifference toward herself. He shot restless glances toward the window, seemed to strain his ear as if for some expected signal. When his eye swept over her, it was with an impatience other than that of the fond lover. She took the instrument from his hand, and watched him with a new, critical closeness as he flung himself upon the settle opposite to her.

In a tone which ill concealed irritability, he cried to her:—

“Begin—begin, little bird!”

Here was some odd mystery. She folded her hands across the polished olive-wood.

“Heavens!” she exclaimed, and it was her turn now to mock. “What a passion for music has your lordship!”

His eye shot anger upon her, beneath contracted brow. She felt at last that she had power, and her smile widened.

“You and your song,” said he, “are inseparable. By your graciousness I hold you mine for a little while, nor will I be defrauded of any of the sweetness you can give.”

The words seemed charmingly chosen; but again the underlying, unknown purpose was perceptible. A quick inspiration came to her: here was the moment to bargain; and Enguerrand, the little impertinent one, should know of her easy triumph before this grey English day had turned to the murky English night.

“If I sing,” she said, “I must have my guerdon.”

Amusement and relief sprang together into his look:—

“Nay, then, pretty one; make your own terms. Pearls for those shell-like ears—gems for that throat—”

She shook her head till the ringlets danced.

“Speak, then,” he went on impatiently. “What jewel, what bauble?”

She bent forward with a new, adorable softness, coaxing.

“A mere trifle, indeed, milord. I but ask for that locket of yours with which you were pleased to excite the curiosity of Whitehall last night.”

“How now!” said Rockhurst. He started, and turned the lightning of his glance, the thunder-cloud of his brow, upon her, a man whom it was not good to offend, and she quailed an instant. Then her hot blood rose in jealous passion:—

“So vastly precious? Why, then, generous milord Constable, suppose I put a high price upon my song; are you so ungallant?”

“Little madame,” retorted he, drily, “since you set a price on your favour, you would be as vastly disappointed with this poor trinket as Eve with the taste of her apple. Continue to desire it,” he went on, falling back into his tone of light cynicism. “To long for anything unattainable is one of the spices of existence.”

The firelight leaped on her angry face. She sprang to her feet, dashing aside the guitar, which fell on the stone floor with sonorous wail.

“If I could flatter myself I was helping to provide milord’s tedium with such a spice,” she cried, “my immediate departure would have a double charm!”

She reached a trembling hand toward her cloak. He, outstretched on the settle, watched her, without moving. At this moment, grave sounds, a trumpet call, followed by dull roll of kettledrum, rose from without into the momentary silence of the room. Stone wall and vault gave back the echo. There was a hurried tramp of feet, sharp cries of command. The Frenchwoman’s hand was arrested in mid-air. She looked in startled query at her host, who was slowly gathering his long limbs together preparatory to rising. He met her glance with one that struck her excited fancy as sinister, and she gave a cry like a child:—

“Let me out of this horrible place! You have no right to keep me here!”

He caught her wrist with a grasp gentle yet relentless.

“Your password, Jeanne, shall be a song—however short, but one stave, a few notes! Your song I must have!”

He picked up the guitar, and again pressed it upon her. She put her hand to her throat with a sob, flung a piteous glance around her like a trapped thing, and struck a faltering chord. Then, in a sudden revulsion, her courage rose again.

“Pah!” she cried, “’tis out of tune! Eh, bien non! I will not sing! I am French; you have no right to hold me here!”

“By the Lord!” said Rockhurst, a gleam of genuine admiration leaping to his eye, “but I like your spirit! Be dumb, then, sweetheart. You shall pay me by and by. Nay,” he added, smiling on her bewilderment, “let thy mantle lie where it is; for, prithee, I would have thee assist me to receive his Majesty.”

“His Majesty?” she cried, in fresh amazement.

“Aye,” he laughed. “Didst not hear the royal tucket sound without? Charles in person, who always finds the world but a dull place, even under the same roof with an old friend, if there be not the flutter of a petticoat to liven it. But you have made me dally, little Madame Mischief, and even my indulgent monarch expects some pretence of ceremony.”

His hand was on the bolt of the latchet as he spoke; his last words were almost lost in the echoes of the vaulted passage.

Charles paused on the threshold, his sallow face seeming darker than usual in the grim light. His lips smiled, but there was a certain displeasure in his eye as it roamed from Jeanne’s crimsoning countenance to the guitar on the seat. From the gloom of the passage Enguerrand’s white face shone out, composed save for the deep reproach of his glance when it met that of his sister. Rockhurst alone, bowing the King into his apartment, wore a pleasant air of unconcern.

“We verily believe our visit is inopportune,” said Charles, with sarcastic courtesy. “We have interrupted, we fear, some dulcet music, my Lord Constable?”

Rockhurst closed the heavy door behind his guests, then advanced to the King’s side.

“Nay, sire,” said he, with fine geniality, “the bird came to the lure, it is true, but no art of mine or persuasion could call forth a song.… Your Majesty, no doubt, will prove more successful.”

“Odd’s fish!” cried Charles, with one of his rare, hearty laughs. “Say you so, indeed, invincible Constable? Say you so, indeed, my merry Rockhurst? Beaten? And under such auspices—alone with your fair! But how, then, are we to put our own skill now to the test, before so many witnesses? For we would not win our wager on the royal authority, but in all equality, my good Lord Constable, even as in that merry moment we entered upon it.”

Wager? Here, then, was the word of the riddle! A wager between two irresponsible men of pleasure: who should first obtain of a woman the petty guerdon of a song! ’Twas for that she had been wooed by both—both! And she, who had been uplifted on a wave of magnanimous feeling, who had flattered herself to be giving up a king for the love of a subject! Jeanne de Mantes had grown white to the lips. She caught at the table behind her for support, yet never had her wits been clearer. To sing for neither would serve them both well. Aye, but to sing for Charles would best punish him who had deepest offended. She flung one look of fury at Rockhurst, and then turned to the King, who had let himself sink upon the settle in front of the fire:—

“May the poor object of your Majesty’s wager inquire what are the stakes that were set upon her favour?” she asked, with a deadly sweetness, taking up the guitar and beginning to tune it with little, fierce hands.

Charles, who saw himself on the point of success, answered thoughtlessly, with a schoolboy look of triumph at the constable:—

“I but bargained for a sight of the contents of that mysterious locket which was so contumaciously denied to my curiosity last night, and—” Then he hesitated, with a faint flush of confusion.

“His Majesty,” said Rockhurst, gravely, “with his usual magnanimity, opposed a large guerdon to my trifling stake.”

The King, both spared and taunted by this reminder, moved uneasily on his seat. But already the twang of the guitar in harmonious cadence brought his light humour back to amusement again. If hesitation had still lurked in Jeanne’s mind, the first mention of the locket had swept it away. Her voice rose, robbed perhaps of some of its delicate sweetness, but vibrating with unwonted fire and incisiveness. She chose a bellicose ditty, which a Frondeuse mother had sung to her baby ears. And when she paused, panting, on the last refrain, with a furious sweep across the strings, Charles broke into delighted applause. Enguerrand, flushing with triumph, caught the guitar from his sister’s hand, as with a hysterical gesture she was about to cast it on the floor.

“I have sung!” she cried loudly, with almost a viperine movement, rising from the seat on which she had crouched to play. “Milord Rockhurst has lost his wager. Let him now pay!”

Rockhurst bowed urbanely toward her, drew the locket from its hiding-place, and with a second profound obeisance, handed it, open, to the King. As he looked, the mischievous curiosity on Charles’s face changed to an expression of profound astonishment.

“Odd’s fish!” he cried.

He shot a lightning glance at Enguerrand, then at his Lord Constable, and then at the picture again. And once more his expressive countenance altered.

“Yours?” he queried.

“Yes, your Majesty,” said Rockhurst.

Charles’s eye remained pensive for a further span. But suddenly it wandered to the Frenchwoman, and the mercurial King burst into laughter.

“Odd’s my life, but look at your sweetheart, my lord! The wench is on the very coals of jealousy—a live trout in the frying-pan were in comfort compared to her. Nay, we’ll have no torture in our presence. Fain would you look at your rival, madame?”

Rockhurst made no effort to interfere, and with trembling fingers Jeanne took the trinket from the King’s hand. In her turn she gave a cry; and Charles laughed heartily at the amazement, relief, and disappointment of her air.

“Why, ’tis naught but a boy!”

“Naught but a boy, indeed,” echoed Charles, “yet, we’ll go warrant what our Lord Constable holds dearest upon earth. A likely lad! Aye, and with a strange resemblance to Little Satan there.”

“God forbid!” ejaculated Rockhurst.

And “God forbid!” echoed Enguerrand, pertly, sharp as lightning.

Charles, who had been in high good humour, flung the lad a cold look, under which he fell back abashed and crimsoning—only to glance up again with a spasm of anger and hatred at the Lord Constable, as soon as the sovereign’s head was averted.

“We knew you had an heir,” said the King; then, turning with dignity to his host, “but, my lord Rockhurst, you have let us forget it. How is it? He should be at our Court.”

Bowing deeply, Rockhurst answered in a low voice:—

“My son is brought up in the country, sire.”

“Nay, fie!” said Charles. “Is not that even what we would reproach you with? So fair a stripling should never grow a mere rustic. We’ll have him about us,” insisted the King.

Again there was that moment’s silence. Jeanne looked up from the picture at which she had been absently gazing. This son of Rockhurst interested her not at all; not had he been twice as handsome as the fair, spirited face, with its odd resemblance of features and its odder dissimilitude of expression to her own brother. She felt humiliated to have played so foolish a part of jealousy, and more than ever baffled by the strange personality of the man she had elected to love.

Rockhurst took back the locket, gazed at it again, closed it, and replaced it on its chain.

“Will your Majesty forgive me,” said he, at length, “nor deem me ungrateful if, in spite of your condescension, I yet hold that my son is best in the country?”

“We would at least hear your reason,” said Charles, with some weariness.

“In the country, your Majesty,” replied Rockhurst, then, “my lad will continue to revere his father, to honour womanhood, to live wholesomely … and think purely.”

Charles’s swarthy cheek became suddenly impurpled under a pulse of anger.

“And at our Court can your paragon practise none of these virtues?”

Rockhurst turned his glance deliberately upon the Vidame de Joncelles, who stood behind the King, his handsome chin uptilted, his eyes insolently ready to return the constable’s gaze; then he swept a look upon Jeanne de Mantes. That look said more eloquently than words the thought that was in the father’s brain. Then, at last, he spoke:—

“Let me remind your Majesty of a phrase you made use of last night—‘And he, her brother, the Little Satan!’”

The corners of Charles’s lips twitched humorously at the recollection; his transient anger evaporated. It was the misfortune of his life that he was always most prone to see the light side of the most serious questions.

Enguerrand, with his implike quickness, caught the relaxation of the royal profile, and his own lips quivered with mirth. Upon Rockhurst’s face came an expression of disdain mingled with deep melancholy.

“Your Majesty smiles,” said he, “and so does the lad yonder. Ah, your Majesty, look at him! ’Tis a fine lad, even as my own. And you are right! there is some resemblance, a great resemblance, between them; and your Majesty, who saw me start at it last night, deemed I had seen a spectre. I saw this, sire—what a court makes of youth.”

Charles’s foot had been tapping restlessly. He moved once or twice uneasily in his chair: his merry Rockhurst had not used him to such wearisome moods. Yet he loved the man.

“Nay, nay,” he explained at length; “I’d have you remember, my lord, that it is my cousin of France who is responsible for our Little Satan yonder. Nay, Rockhurst,” he went on, in his easy kindness and his sense of royal prerogative, unable to grasp the fact that any one could be in earnest in refusing the favour of his personal interest; “I’ll have the lad with my own sons. We’d keep our eye upon him, man.”

Rockhurst’s glance rested on the King’s countenance now with an unwonted tenderness.

“Alas, my beloved liege! …” he said gently.

Their gaze commingled; then the amazed displeasure in Charles’s eyes gave place to unwilling amusement, as Rockhurst went on once more in his usual indifferent tone:—

“The poor child would at least, your Majesty will admit, find it hard to practise at Court the fourth commandment.… How should he honour his father? And yet ’tis my wish that his days should be long in the land.”

“Why, then,” said the King, shortly, “there is no more to be said.”

He rose and looked a second keenly at Jeanne. Then, upon one of those generous impulses which none could carry more gracefully into effect than himself:—

“You lost your wager to me, my lord, with all the gallantry I expected of so good a cavalier. But, Odd’s fish! I do not carry away altogether a clear conscience on the subject. If you have lost in the letter, it strikes me you have won in the spirit. I will take it, if you please, that we have both won; I will indite forthwith an order on the exchequer for those greedy yeomen of yours who contrive to be always under arrears of pay.… Though, upon my life, Rockhurst, you and your fellows put me in mind of those callow birds we used to watch, in our wandering days: it boots little how big the last mouthful—ever a squawk for more!”

Rockhurst folded his lips upon the obvious retort. He took the sheet from the King’s hand with an air of profound obligation:—

“Your Majesty’s veterans will be deeply gratified.”

But already Charles was weary of the subject, weary of his present company.

“Madame,” he said, bowing toward Jeanne as he hastily got up, “we shall importune you no longer with our presence.”

The little Frenchwoman understood very well that in these words all royal pretensions to her favour were finally abandoned, and, in her infatuation for Rockhurst, cared as little for the fact as for the furious look cast upon her afresh by Enguerrand.

“Come, Vidame,” said the King. Then he added, with a malicious gesture that pointed from Jeanne to Rockhurst, “Come, you are as much out of place in this atmosphere of virtue as ourself!”

THE PEACOCK WALK