A swift thunder-storm had rushed down the Thames valley, passed over sultry London with clamour and hail scourge, and was gone—as sudden and wholesome as a good man’s passion. The town lay, a little dazed, it seemed, gasping as one astonished, yet mightily refreshed.

In the gardens of the Temple every leaf dripped and shone the brighter; the dry earth drank and sent up a fragrance to mingle with the scent from the historic rose-bushes of the inner pleasance, the glory of which now lay scattered, white and red, on the turf, each petal with the tears in its heart glinting under that sky of incomparable blue that reveals itself after the squall.

Down the steep slope from King’s Bench Walk, mimic mountain torrents rushed in haste, seeking the river which rolled, heaving still, a troubled yellow, in angry ebb toward the east, where the clouds still lowered in their flight.

Even in Whitefriars—that strange, knavish demesne lying at the very gates of the great legal college; that debatable land of crime, of statutory or at least traditional immunities—every dark lane had been swept as with besoms, if not clean, at least less foul. The stale airs of Alsatia (as the cant word went to express that sanctuary of tricksters and cheats and huffing bullies, of skulking debtors, rejected clergymen, and disbarred lawyers, of gaudy courtesans in enforced retreat) were driven forth before the fresh and mighty breath of the gale. The gutters ran gurgling, overflowing where they would. Here and there a choked conduit sent mock waterfalls from overhanging eaves, darting and splashing even to the opposite walls. All Alsatia, which had scuttled to its burrows, was beginning to pop its head out again; but, as the denizens in the ’Friars have, as a rule, rare change of garment, few ventured as yet into the slop and drip.

Thus the two youthful gallants who now emerged from the Half Moon Tavern, in Priory Lane, had the length of the street to themselves.

“Quelle peste—!” said the slighter and darker of the two.

Stepping gingerly aside to give wide berth to the dismal carcase of a cat, he received the spray from an odorous gutter-spout full in the neck—and again exclaimed in French against the pestilential offence of the place.

His companion nipped him by the elbow, as he himself, less fastidiously, strode over the carcase.

“Fie, Vidame,” he cried, “’tis well we’re not at Whitehall! Never forget ’tis a forbidden word, just now.”

The Vidame Enguerrand de Joncelles tossed his black curls with a somewhat scornful look at the speaker.

“In verity, Sir Paul,” he retorted, in his precise, quaintly emphasized yet fluent English, “I believe that, eating, drinking or sleeping, Court rules and Court favour are never out of your head! As for the—” his long dark eyes glinted mischievously—“as for the ugly distemper which begins with a letter P. in both our tongues, what have people of quality to do with it? Bah! it is to kill the canaille—useful, like rat-bane.”

“Yet … if you will come into Alsatia—” grumbled Sir Paul Farrant; and just then, a gush of intolerable stench striking across them from an open cellar door, he drew his laced kerchief from his breast and buried nose and mouth in its folds.

The Frenchman went steadily on, scarce a flicker of disgust on his narrow, pale face.—If high-born disdain was safe to keep the plague at a distance, certes the Vidame de Joncelles—King Charles’s new favourite page at Whitehall—was proof against it.

There was silence between the comrades, until the worn, muddy steps of the Temple-Gate brought them up from the unwholesome precincts of Whitefriars into the green and airy spaces of the King’s Bench Walk. There, shaking out his kerchief, Sir Paul resumed his interrupted complaint:—

“If you will come to Alsatia.…”

“If your misunderstanding townsfolk will drive the best fence master within your shores to take sanctuary in yonder pit—for the merest peccadillo—”

“Peccadillo, Vidame!—Why, the man drew on our host of the Three Tuns in Westminster, and slit both his ears, for refusing to serve him with a flagon of claret on trust…!”

“Perdi, a wretched innkeeper! It was an insolence that deserved worse—The hog is not dead!—Meanwhile, instead of suiting my convenience and practising my sword-play in Westminster, I must now come seek him in this pestilent lane!”

“Why, Master Enguerrand,” said Farrant, standing still on the wet sod to stare, half in amazement, half in admiration, at the Vidame, “the fellow owed him a reckoning as long as his sword.”

“And what of it? Is not such a master as LaperriÈre, whose lot in life it is to deal with us nobles, one of those whom gentles daily cross sword with and condescend to take instruction from, is not such an one to be privileged? A reckoning, forsooth! A master of fence, with us in France, Sir Paul, is held a gentleman. Our King has even ennobled many. And those others there, the rabble—are they not made and born for our service? As for the rest, as for this Plague that is about, speak no more of it. If you are so frightened of a little smell, what brings you day by day to the fencing room with me?—It is your own doing.”

“Aye,” said Farrant. “But think you,” he went on in hurt tones, “I would let you alone to such dangerous grounds as Whitefriars—you a stranger and my friend, Vidame?”

They were strolling slowly down across the gardens toward the river stairs. The Vidame, as if tired by his exertions in the fencer’s room, let himself drop on a stone bench in the central alley.

“Let us rest awhile, please you, Sir Paul. As you see, the tide is still running out. The turn, which is to take us back to Whitehall, is not due until after five o’clock. Let us wait here.”

He doffed his plumed beaver and hung it upon the cane by his side; then turned his pale, dissipated face, with a smile of cynical amusement, toward his companion. Sir Paul Farrant was only one of the many friends who had gathered so assiduously about the young Frenchman—a page in the train of Madame Henriette, sister of the King—since his Majesty had taken so strong and sudden a fancy to him as to retain him in his personal service after her departure for France.

“See how the world wags,” resumed the favourite then; “you, Sir Paul, seek the dens yonder,”—he pointed to the sinister purlieus they had just left behind,—“because of a friend—I, because of an enemy.”

Farrant pricked his ears under his silken, fair curls. It was the first time he had been admitted even so far into the Vidame’s confidence. This Enguerrand, a French boy who in a few months’ time had stepped, it seemed, without the slightest effort into the inner circle of Court favour, upon the outer rim of which the indefatigable Sir Paul had scarce a footing, was an enigma to his associates. He had a handsome sister; but his success depended not on her, for had she not denied the King for the sake of the King’s friend, Lord Rockhurst? It was an open secret in Whitehall. Enough to have damned the chances of any other man, it would seem! Yet here was the lad, with his white, handsome, secret face; with his silent, insolent, easy ways; with his deep moods, his sudden rages, as close to his Majesty, as audacious and as secure of his position as young Monmouth himself. Farrant had witnessed his first introduction—he knew that there was no secret tie, no mystery save in the new page’s own personality. Sir Paul, the failure, would have given all he possessed for the talisman. Yet the talisman was no such occult thing, but an unfailing talent to amuse that most melancholy man, whom the world liked to call the Merry Monarch.

“An enemy, say you, my good Enguerrand?” cried the young baronet, lifting his foolish eyebrows a trifle higher than nature had set them. He had the curiosity of trivial natures and was all agog.

“Aye, perdi,” responded the other, briefly.

The wind was ruffling his dark head, blowing the heavy curls off the forehead; making patent at once the extreme youth and the prematurely worn countenance.

“And you are then a-practising against a rencounter.… O, Master Enguerrand, I pray you that I be your second!”

“Why, you shall so, then.” The words dropped from the other’s lips in careless condescension.

Enguerrand’s eyes were lost in space. Across the river, between the merry, white, flying clouds and the green fields of Surrey, he saw Heaven knows what bloody vision of triumph.

“And he—the man, the enemy?” asked Sir Paul, after a while.

“Him whom I shall kill … with that little escaping thrust of our LaperriÈre … yes, it shall be that … the great man? Yet none so great, Sir Paul, but that he must himself defend his honour … and none so old but that he be as much man as I—even as I am none so young but that I am as much man as he.…”

At which cryptic utterance he folded his delicate lips on silence.

Farrant stared. There was one to whom the words applied; one to whom the brother of Madame de Mantes, as all Whitehall was aware, might well owe grudge. But, forsooth, that one was so high placed, a personage of so much importance, that he dismissed the idea as preposterous. Farrant indeed had many a secret grudge himself against this powerful being, against his haughtiness and the lash of his cold mockery; but he would as soon have dreamed of seeking satisfaction from his Majesty’s own person.

Enguerrand had fallen into a deep muse. His comrade began to find the silence tedious, and took to counting the passage of the barges through the opening of the Temple water-gate, chattering in comment:—

“Yonder went the fat master of the Curriers, Tyrrell, with his pretty daughter—would I had as good a chance with her as that stout prentice who sits behind the good man’s back…! Ah, and yonder went Master Lionel Ratcliffe—mark how his men pull as if life and death depended on their oars. I’ll wager you, he’s bound for Chillingburgh House.… But, no, the skiff keeps its nose down-stream.… The tide will soon be on the turn.—Eh, as I live, here comes a royal barge—mark the swing of the scarlet oars! Old Rowley himself, perchance—nay, sink me, it is but the Lord Constable! Odd! I was thinking of him but a moment awhile … I.… ’Slife, there’s no mistaking that dark figure! I vow he casts a shade over the royal scarlet itself. Merry Rockhurst, quotha! Has any one ever seen him smile, except in mockery? How now? Why, the barge heads for the Temple stairs!—What may the Constable of the Tower be seeking in the Temple?”

The babble died abruptly on his lips, so singular a change had he marked coming over his companion’s face: a spasm of vindictiveness followed by a slow, evil smile. A chill ran through Farrant’s frame. He was no coward, but he would have given much to recall his rash offer of a few minutes ago; for he had read in the Vidame’s eyes the name of his enemy.

The barge swung with masterly ease to the landing. A quick word rang out from the head waterman, and the glistening oars were tossed in the air. The red of the men’s jackets, the crimson of the barge’s drapery, stained to rich depths and unexpected tints of orange by weather and usage, made a gay picture amid the sparkle of the water, the dancing shine and shadow, in which the figure of the Lord Constable was indeed a note of striking gravity.

The wind-ruffled feathers of the beaver were black, even as the curls that fell on his shoulders. A black cloak, silver-trimmed, was cast loosely back as he stepped from the barge, revealing a body-dress of so sombre a purple as to seem, if possible, of more severe a tone than the cloak. The keen, pale face, with the hawk’s eyes, the silver amid the raven-black of the cavalier moustache and beard,—which it was the great Lord Rockhurst’s pleasure to preserve in spite of the newer, clean-shaven fashion,—all combined to produce a singularly impressive personality.

Paul Farrant felt upon himself that sense of obtrusive inferiority, of almost physical discomfort, which the presence of the Lord Constable scarcely ever failed to evoke. His lips formed themselves for a soundless whisper. He twirled his grey beaver on the end of his cane; and, upon a second thought, tossed it to his head as giving him an air of greater ease and self-possession.

The French boy’s countenance, on the contrary, seemed now to have become lit by a kind of inner fire that was almost like inspiration. Sir Paul heard him speak to himself, in French—a tongue which he knew but imperfectly:—

“He has come! Why not now … why not this moment!… Pardi, why not, my Lord Rockhurst?”

As he muttered the words the Vidame laid his hat and stick deliberately on the bench and rose. Farrant, his discomposure increasing well-nigh to horror, watched him step forward, tossing back his heavy locks, as raven-black as Rockhurst’s own; and in the pallid, fine-cut young face he noted for the first time an odd resemblance to Rockhurst himself.

In the minutes that next followed, while his English friend remained sitting as if spellbound, Enguerrand, the stranger in the land, went through the crisis of his life.

So swiftly did the scene pass that the men in the barge below had but the time to push off once more and swing but a single stroke on the return journey to the humour of the tide.

Rockhurst, walking sedately up the alley, with a sweep of his tall cane to every other step, halted as he saw the young man approach; and into his gaze, which had been somewhat abstractedly fixed upon the fair green of the garden, there flashed a strange look.

Sir Paul Farrant was scarce a man of nice observation, yet he could have sworn that my lord’s eyes had for a second held a gleam of indulgence almost approaching to tenderness, as they had lighted upon the lad.

“Well met, my Lord Viscount!” cried Enguerrand, in a high, excited voice. “Aye—well met!”

If Lord Rockhurst’s glance had been kindly, it was swiftly and marvellously altered. Intolerably mocking now and cold it became, to match the tone of the response:—

“Well met … Little Satan!”

Enguerrand had been holding his passion upon a frail leash. With a bound it now leaped. This man, by whom, at their first meeting in Whitehall, he had conceived himself, in his hypersensitive French punctilio of vanity, to have been slighted, and who had treated him from the height of his crushing superiority, who had thwarted and humiliated him, robbed him (as he held) of his sister and his preferment at one swoop—how dare he now address him in this tone of contemptuous familiarity? It was well met at last, indeed! The moment he had dreamed of, sleeping or waking, these two months was within his grasp!

“My lord,” he cried still more shrilly, “his Majesty’s familiar name for me, on any other lips becomes a liberty, an insolence! An insolence, sir, a liberty I will not permit!”

To his mortification he found himself trembling from head to foot. For an appreciable moment Rockhurst ran his glance up and down the slight figure. Then he made answer; and the indifference, the placidity, of his manner was inconceivably galling:—

“True—I should not usurp his Majesty’s great privileges. But, pray, let me pass, Vidame—I have business with Master Sergeant Stafford, and I am already late, I fear, for my tryst.”

“Nay, milord, you shall not pass!—My lord, this is my tryst. It has been your pleasure to heap injuries on me, and on more than one score you owe me redress. We meet, at last, oh, at last! upon ground where the royal ordinance no longer stands between us. My Lord Viscount Rockhurst—” He was feverishly stripping his glove from his left hand as he spoke; but the Lord Constable, with a single gesture, swept him and his argument from the path with no more emotion than that of a man who rids himself of an importunate fly. With the same measured step he then resumed his course up the garden alley.

For a second the Vidame stood, staring after him, paralysed with rage. A faint snigger—of mingled relief and amusement—from the watcher on the bench started him to fresh action, as the prick of the spur starts the mettled horse. In a couple of leaps he had overtaken the stately figure, and Sir Paul Farrant wheeled round to gaze after the pair, astonishment as much as prudence keeping him rooted to his place. Enguerrand dashed the glove at Lord Rockhurst’s feet. The first impulse had aimed it at the face; but something stronger than himself, which the while only increased his fury, prevented the youth from offering this supreme insult to one whom years and honours and personal dignity placed apart even in the King’s presence.

“My lord, you—because I am a stranger, because I am, forsooth, young enough to be your son (À Dieu ne plaise!), you imagine you can treat me at your will and pleasure; insult me at your mood.… I stand, however, a man before you, my Lord Constable—with a name as good as yours. I demand my satisfaction.… My lord, I charge you, defend yourself!”

The young heart beat so fast, rose so high in his throat, that the words pulsed from his lips in jerks, broken with quick breaths. He drew his rapier with an almost frenzied gesture as he spoke; dashing baldrick and scabbard on one side; falling back to swing the blade with dire menace and then springing forward again, high-poised, tiptoe, only the elementary rules of honour keeping him from assault until his enemy should have likewise unsheathed.

A second or two, marked by the lad’s panting, Lord Rockhurst fixed him through half-closed eyelids. Then, without a word, with a dexterous, irresistible, upstroke of his cane, he knocked the weapon from the fierce hand. The springy steel fell and bounded like a live thing on the flagged path, to drop again, quivering, close to Rockhurst, who, with a lightning swiftness unexpected from one of such majestic bearing, instantly clapped his foot upon it.

Then the whole precincts of the garden, it seemed, were filled with the thunder of his voice:—

“Malapert…!” The Lord Constable’s brows were now drawn over his keen eyes in a withering frown. “This cane of mine should teach your youthship better manners were it not for this same strangerhood of yours, on which you thus presume! Aye, and you should have remembered this day, even with stripes, but that some freak of your Maker’s hath given you, graceless lad as you are, Vidame, a singular look of my own gracious son. For his so sweet sake … thou varlet … I spare thee. Yet will this hour have taught thee that his Majesty’s officers are not to be molested with impunity—that the Page of the Wine Flagon can have no satisfaction to demand of the King’s Lord Constable, what though his petty vanity may be a-smarting from some imagined slights.—Slights, quotha! Young master,—there can be no slights from me to you…! And for this insolence of yours to me, take you home this memento.”

With another of his startlingly sudden movements, Rockhurst stooped for the hilt of the sword that lay bent under his foot; and snapped the blade in twain, with as much ease as one may snap a twig. Tossing the hilt back at the Vidame’s feet, he went on—and it seemed that his anger had but gathered in intensity with the action:—

“Hang yonder stump of steel in your bedchamber: it may serve to remind you of a fruitful lesson learned in the Temple Gardens—how the satisfaction fit for a pert page’s receiving is a sound whipping, and how you, of my mercy, escaped receiving it!”

He stepped from the broken blade, passed the boy’s rigid figure so closely and indifferently as to brush him with his cloak, and set his deliberate way again toward the Temple Hall.

The Vidame stood stricken with impotent passion, sick well-nigh to swooning with the violence of his fury in conflict with his complete helplessness; white as wax, his boyish face distorted, his eyes blood-injected, swimming in tears; a white foam at the corners of his mouth, his lips drawn back in voiceless execration. The nails of his clenched hands drove themselves into the flesh. It was not until Paul Farrant rose and laid his hand on his shoulder that the palsy was broken.

The Vidame shook the touch furiously from him. His bloodshot eyes rolled from the broken weapon on the path to the other’s face, on which a malicious pleasure in his successful friend’s mortification was but ill concealed by a scarcely more tolerable air of sympathy. Had it not been for the mutilation of his weapon, Paul Farrant’s life’s blood might well have assuaged the Frenchman’s ecstasy of hatred at that moment.

Then the floodgates were loosed. Foaming, the tide of passion leaped from Enguerrand’s mouth with an eloquence that betrayed his race. Usually silent, the Vidame de Joncelles, encompassed with an almost northern reserve, yet was through his mother a child of the south; and at this hour all the exuberance of the warm land, all the acrid passion that only its children can feel and which, felt, must find word expression, broke from him in torrents of imprecations and curses, half French, half English:—

“Go thy way, then, my merry Rockhurst—go, Rakehell Rockhurst! Ha, Rakehell thou mayst be, but forget not then that I am Little Satan, and you but the servant of my Great Father!… Go thy way, sanctimonious hypocrite, you of the grave face and grey-sprinkled hair, hoary in corruption! You, put me out of your path…! My hour will come, my hour will come, my hour will come! Faugh! I spit at thee; my clean blade was too fair for thee, thou coward, thou bully, hiding behind thy state and thy years…! And that prate of paternity! I, like thy son?… Had I within my veins a drop of thy coward, hateful blood, I’d drain them and die laughing that I was rid of thee! Look at the great man…! Look! Watch the reverend seigneur! See how yonder wretches make way for my Lord Constable!—My Lord Coward!… Look you, Sir Paul, is it not an admirable spectacle? The King’s friend, the mighty in council, the example to the Court! Hi, my Lord Rockhurst—Hi, thou pattern of nobility—what of my sister, what of Jeanne de Mantes?… And afraid to fight the brother! Look, look, friends! Ha, he’s old enough to be my father, and my sister—’tis his boast! I, like his son, forsooth? And my sister has but a year of life more than mine! O, que l’Âge a ses privilÈges! Oh, how that paternal heart beats to high thoughts! Curse thee, burn thee, drown thee … coward!”

Stragglers in the garden, attracted by the wild clamours, had now begun to gather. Up the slimy steps, from the ’Friars, like obscene beasts venturing furtively from their lairs, the frowzy, arrogant heads of thieving bullies,—“Knights of the Posts” and “Copper Captains,”—scenting a profitable quarrel, began to emerge. And these were shadowed by dismal shapes of womanhood, such as in those haunts were never far from the scenes of strife, like to the hovering carrion bird.

The Vidame, in his paroxysm, cared as little whether his words were flung to the solitary winds or to a thousand listeners. As the Lord Constable’s cloaked figure disappeared altogether from view under the Hall archway of the Inner Temple, the boy’s outburst culminated in an almost eastern flight of malediction:—

“May your shadow bring a blight wherever it falls…! May your loves, your hopes, your desires be bitter as ashes…! May your own flesh and blood turn against you! May you blast the life of your own son till he wishes he had never been born! Curse you…! May your own flesh and blood curse you! May you want and never get—seek and never find! May your pillow be haunted and your waking a horror! May your wine-cup poison you and the pest follow you and break out under your footsteps! May fire consume your pride and your hair grow white in misery, in dishonour, and then may Death be deaf to your call—!”

He fell back against a tree, breath failing on his lips; flung one arm against the bole and rested his brow upon it. Then the tears which his fire of rage had burned from his eyelids threatened to overwhelm him in the weakness that follows on all such unnatural paroxysms.

Sir Paul Farrant stood a moment, dubious. He glanced from the figure against the lime tree to the dingy rabble that were drawing ever closer in grinning curiosity and unholy expectation.—In sooth (was the thought gathering strength in his mind) the little new star of Court favour seemed like to be quenched! Yonder was the lucky youth (to dare to beard the Lord Constable.… It had been safer, almost, to have affronted the King!) broken by a mere twist of that strong hand!

A couple of Templars, grave-looking young men, had halted a few paces away; and now, with a low-voiced murmur to one another and an angry glance of scorn flung at the gentry that the clamour had gathered from below the steps into their trim gardens, they passed on their way.

Farrant was quick to read the omen. Henceforth, it seemed, Enguerrand de Joncelles, the King’s favourite, would have to seek associates in such doubtful and dangerous company rather than among gentlemen of standing who had a care for their reputation and advancement.—The sprightly Vidame … threatened with a whipping—aha!

So Sir Paul replaced his beaver with a hasty gesture and, cautiously treading, took path across the turf toward the water-gate, where he reckoned to find his skiff in waiting. The while his friend wept corrosive tears against the bark of the lime tree.

The “Brothers of the Huff,” the Daughters of Joy, and other good companions of Alsatia, who had awaited, expecting sport, glanced at each other in disappointment. Upon the disappearance of the Templars, one of their number made a dash for the silver hilt on the ground; closely hustled by a second, swift to perceive the intention. This latter had to be content, however, with the broken blade, and a scuffle would have ensued had not a burly personage, who seemed to have authority among them, put an end to the dispute by possessing himself of the spoils and hustling the others back to the stairway.

A girl in tawdry finery now tripped stealthily toward the young man, who was so completely lost in the abstraction of his misery to all his surroundings, that he never felt the nimble touch that drew from his pocket the laced handkerchief, nor woke to actuality until her screech of laughter rang into his ears.

Here another woman sprang from the watchful group at the head of the stairs and flung herself between the pilferer and the Vidame, as he stood staring, white-faced and shaken.

“As for you,” cried she, “march!”

The outflung gesture that accompanied the words seemed to cow the thieving strumpet.

As the girl slunk away, cursing “French Joan and her tantrums,” yet in evident awe of her, the newcomer put forth her hand and touched the Vidame’s wrist.

Looking at her, dazed, he recognised LaperriÈre’s black-browed sister: a strange, sinister figure of uncertain age, and with sullen remains of what must have been great beauty, who was wont to sit moodily stitching in the little antechamber to the fencing master’s room. She had never a word for him as he passed daily to and fro, but a long, deep look: the same look was now plunging into his eyes. Having gained his attention, she dropped her hand from his and, folding her arms with a gesture of some dignity, began, in French, low-voiced and rapid:—

“Hate! Hatred! Oh, la haine…! I have known it, my young lord! But nothing my brother can teach or do will help you here! What use is the sword and the skill of it against him who will not fight?”

Enguerrand stared at her. Then into his fixed glance of despair sprang a sudden kindling flash, in response to the strong, devouring gaze that still held his.

“You cursed too loud, mon joli seigneur. Oh, too loud…! When one wants revenge, one must be silent!”

“Revenge…!” echoed Enguerrand, with such a cry as a despairing lover might give as he echoed his mistress’s call.

“Hush!” said she whom Alsatia called French Joan, two brown fingers on her lips.

She bent forward, lowering her voice still more, although the mocking rabble that pressed about them, only kept at bay by her hard and watchful eyes, could have made nothing of her foreign speech:—

“Yet you spoke well,” she went on. “‘May the wine-cup poison you!—May the pest follow you and break out under your footsteps…!’ A man may find that in his cup which will give him quick passage … as quick and quicker than the pest, believe me. He might have drunk, and the wine have lain as pleasant on his tongue as ever; and, lo!—before he can call for his second draught the pest, it seems, has stilled his heart—or so will every one say in these days: swooning, mortal sweat and burning fire, death, all within the hour.… The pest, indeed, all who had seen it would swear. Not a sign lacking: except that it strikes so quick, so quick—no time for remedies! And yet ’tis not the pest. It holds within a small thimble. He, mon joli seigneur. A treasure for those who understand hate. My brother brought back his best sword-passes from Italy—I brought back better … the acquetta … eh, my pretty lord? The Tofana drops, for them you hate…! You may trust me … they have been tried: else, maybe, we should not be here … and your luck would thereby be the less. If fate gave you the chance of mixing such a cup for the one you curse, what would you give to fate?”

“All I possess,” whispered the Vidame, hotly. “Anything she asked!”

Again the deep, inscrutable eyes brooded upon him. Then French Joan showed her white teeth in a smile that gave a kind of lurid beauty to her dark face.

“Well, we shall see,” she said; “maybe I shall ask much, maybe I shall ask little.… Give me your hand, my pretty gentleman,” she cried, raising her voice into sonorousness again, and speaking in broken English: “I will lead you back to my brother’s. I have a cordial for such weakness.—Lean on me!”

Jeers and shouts responded from the greasy steps.

“Lean on French Joan, Master Frenchman! French Joan has a cordial for weak gentlemen!”

“Marry!” cried the girl who had stolen the kerchief, “will he come out alive again, think ye, masters?”

“Rather him than me, with French Joan!” roared the youngest ruffler, clapping his arms around her waist.

II
THE VENETIAN GLASS

“Little Satan,” said Charles, “a plague on all women, I say!”

The King’s page started from the gloomy muse in which he had been gazing out of the window recess of the royal room in Whitehall, at the flowing tide below.

“Amen—your Majesty!” he answered, with an attempt at sprightliness, the impotence of which brought a frown to the discontented face turned upon him. “As the times go, your Majesty’s wish carries the charm of possibility.… If all one hears be true, the plague hath taken already not a few—”

“Little Satan,” said the King, “many sins can be pardoned to your infernal reputation; but there is one, Odd’s fish! unforgivable.… You are growing monstrous dull, you are tedious. You lack tact, too, by the Lord! Fie, is it page’s business to put his master in mind of what he had better forget?—The veriest young cit would know better than to prate in our ears of what they would fain be deaf to.… Gadzooks, little boy, did we pick you out, think you, French and pert and joyous, for our Page of the Bottle, that you might ape our long-faced puritan ways and go mooning about our person, clapping your hand to your heart, sighing like furnace or lover?”

Here a chuckle shook the long, lazy figure sunk in the Flemish chair.

“Is it love? Marry, it can be but love! Little Satan in love!” cried the King, avid, in the deep weariness of his existence, for the slightest pretence of amusement. “Come, confess—Dan Cupid has shot his arrow into that sulphureous young heart of thine! My little devil’s in love—and being in love, has been as dull company, these three weeks, as any angel that ever flapped wings.”

The Vidame had left the window recess and now stood before the King. His hand had indeed gone to his heart, with what seemed an habitual gesture. He dropped it by his side and hung his head; a dull colour crept into his cheeks and faded again. Never burdened with any superfluity of flesh, he yet had grown noticeably thin these three weeks, and the healthy pallor of his face had been replaced by feverish tints as of one wasted by haunting, unsatisfied fires.

His royal master surveyed him, half irritably, half concernedly:—

“Come, little Enguerrand—the name of the cruel, the obdurate one?”

The page again arrested with a jerk the involuntary motion of his hand to his breast, flung back his head and suddenly laughed.

“Your Majesty, she is beautiful, if dark; and I believe that I shall kiss her on the lips before long.”

But Charles, though the most easy-going of monarchs, could rebuke undue liberty by a mere upraising of one heavy eyebrow. This sign of displeasure and the silence with which he received his page’s seemingly pert answer brought the blood leaping again into Enguerrand’s wasted cheek. If he could hate, this passionate youth, he could also love; and he loved Charles with an intensity only second to his hatred for the Lord Constable. He shook his curls over his face to hide his confusion.

Charles yawned and sank a fraction lower in his great chair. For a man who demanded but one thing of life,—that it should run even,—fate was playing him sorry tricks these days. Sickness and discontent were growing apace in the kingdom, money difficulties were pressing increasingly upon him, the progress of the war was doubtful, the quarrels of the Stewart and the Castlemaine made Whitehall a place of vast discomfort; and, besides, there were the interlacing circles of intrigue spun about him by consort, children, brother, ministers, divines, ruined loyalists, aspiring mistresses.

“Odd’s fish! Little Satan,” he resumed, good-humoured even in his exacerbation, “can you not consult your Great Father and find me an hour’s diversion?”

“Will your Majesty be pleased to survey the present of Venetian glass sent by his Majesty of France?—The chandelier has been suspended from the ceiling of the small supper room, the great mirror hung upon the wall, and the drinking vessels laid out on the buffet—according to your Majesty’s order. I saw it done this morning.”

“Pshaw!” said the King.

When these instructions had been given, he had planned a discreet party in the newly adorned chamber. But, two had heard of an invitation that one only had received. And the royal temper was still smarting from the consequent recriminations. He thought back on the distasteful scene, now, with renewed injury:—

“Gad, I’ll banish the petticoats … though, by the Mass, the periwigs are little better! I shall have Buckingham drawing on Hamilton for the privilege of annexing my Venetian glass!” He chuckled bitterly at the sense of his own too easy good nature. “I trust they’ve nailed the mirror fast,” he cried aloud; “I am told it is mighty fine.”

Yet there was one of his chosen companions who had never sought for either advancement or booty, and who had a humour that fitted well with his own in these moods of reaction, when the voluptuary yielded to cynical melancholy.

“Why,” exclaimed Charles, suddenly lifting himself in his seat with an animation he had not hitherto shown, “it is a week or more since I have seen my ‘Merry Rockhurst.’ Get you to the Tower, Little Satan, as fast as your black wings can carry you. Bid my Lord Constable to the rescue. Tell him I am dull, que je m’ennuie, Vidame, et qu’il vienne s’ennuyer avec moi, for I am persuaded he is as dull as I am. ’Tis the fate of good wit in a weary world. How now—not gone?”

“Sire,” said the lad, in a toneless voice, “Lord Rockhurst is at Whitehall. I saw him at his writing but just now, as I passed the Window of his apartment.”

“All the better fortune! Haste, then,” said the King. “But hark ye, Little Satan: Rockhurst alone! God forbid there should be a flounce near our presence to-night! Bid the Lord Constable come and crack a bottle with us as in the old days of Flanders.”

A rueful grin spread over his saturnine countenance. Castlemaine and Stewart had been overmuch for him this morning in their division: united, against a new rival—no, the thought was beyond the pale of contemplation!

Once outside, in the great corridor, filled already with evening gloom, Enguerrand paused:—

“Bid the Lord Constable come and crack a bottle with us…!” The boy flung back his head and breathed sharply, through dilated nostrils, as if scenting ecstasy. His moment,—so long brooded upon, desired with such acrid ardour,—was it at last within his grasp? His hand went up to his breast with that gesture that had attracted the King’s notice. Aye, there it lay over his heart, the tiny phial of French Joan! Day and night he felt it, burning, biting into his soul; day and night he heard it whispering, urging, at once tormenting and delighting. Since that horrible hour in the Temple Gardens, it was all he had left to look for in the world. His life, shamed in his own eyes, was a worthless thing. That other life once swept away, nothing would matter that could befall him, be it death or disgrace. He went to sleep every night holding the phial against his heart.… His Vengeance, dark and beautiful…! as the lover holds his lady’s guerdon. The moment, was it actually drawing at hand when he was to kiss her on the lips?

He gave a sudden laugh—secret-sounding yet triumphant, the abandoned laugh of the madman over his obsession—which startled a sleeping page at the end of the passage as with a sense of terror in the air, and he set off running on his errand, past the astonished servants.

When he reached the Lord Constable’s Whitehall apartment, by the Holbein gateway, his lordship was still sitting at his table in the dusk, apparently absorbed in some deep revery; so deep indeed that he stared at Enguerrand with unseeing eyes. The white-haired servant had twice to repeat the announcement: “The King’s page, my lord, with a command from his Majesty,” before his master roused himself to attention. Then the Lord Constable turned his fine head questioningly toward the messenger.

Enguerrand bowed low, tasting, in a kind of inner intoxication, the full sense of his own irony:—

“His Majesty bids you to supper, my lord, to crack—these are his Majesty’s own words—a bottle of Rhenish, as in the old days of Flanders. His Majesty is melancholy and—commands that you come and be melancholy with him.”

The faintest shadow of a smile passed over the grave, listening countenance. Any one who once came under the gaze of those brilliant, haunting eyes of the Lord Constable’s could well conceive that such an order was of easy obedience. He sat in melancholy, as his royal master sat in tedium: hence the subtle pleasantry of ‘my Merry Rockhurst.’

“Thank you, Vidame,” said he, half rising, with a formal inclination of the head. “Inform his Majesty, if you please, that I attend instantly.”

The French boy had to pause outside the gateway door, to battle with the suffocating rage that suddenly invaded him. Rather would he have received fresh insults from his enemy than this perfect courtesy—a courtesy which at once seemed to remember and to pass over. In that last glance that rested upon him, in that deep, brooding look, there had almost lurked (or so he thought) pity. Pity! Enguerrand tore open the ruffle at his throat and gasped for breath.

Then, as swiftly as it had come, the paroxysm passed. Weakling, to waste his energies on fruitless curses! Was not his hour nigh, and did he not need the cool head, the steady hand, the quick eye?… He once had offered his honour and his sword for a chivalrous test … they both had been broken and cast from him.… Vastly well! Now would he pass the secret thrust for which there is no parry! He fastened his ruffle again with fingers that now scarcely trembled. And, as he ran back to the royal apartment, he broke shrilly into a stave of song: that same frondeur lilt that had tickled the royal ears from Sister Jeanne’s lips on yonder night when she had met fortune and jilted her—at the King’s supper party:—

rose the high notes.

“Master Page,” said a yeoman sternly, “have you taken leave of your wits? The King is within.…”

“I know, I know,” said Enguerrand, poising himself for a moment on one springing foot, and looking back over his shoulder like some light Mercury in satin and ringlet. “I know, good old greybeard, and ’tis I serve his Majesty’s supper to-night!”

Then, as he leaped forward again, he took up the song, under his breath, this time, and in English,—

Halfway down the corridor he paused once more, and once more looked back:—

“Look out for my Lord Constable of the Tower, you, Master Beefeater … for he sups with the King to-night!”

His laugh echoed as he disappeared in the antechamber.

“A murrain on these French crickets to whom his Majesty is fain to give what should belong to honest English lads!” grumbled the yeoman, as he ordered his halbert with a thud. “’Tis mercy we have such gentlemen as my Lord Constable about the person—to keep balance. And here indeed comes my noble lord.”

Rockhurst halted a second beside the old yeoman. The gnarled hand that grasped the halbert had lost one finger: Rockhurst knew in what fight. Kings may forget what leal subjects have suffered for them, and ladies what lovers have sighed and served, but the captain forgets not the man who has stood in his ranks. Rockhurst’s hair was turning grey and the yeoman’s was white—but they had been young together in the days of Edge Hill.

“A sultry evening, good Ashby,” said the Lord Constable, with his kind, sad eyes on the rugged face that crimsoned with joy under the honour.

“Aye, my lord—aye!” muttered the yeoman in gruff tones. (For the more your Englishman’s heart is touched, the gruffer rings his voice.) “There’s storm brewing, or so my old wounds tell me, my lord.”

“Aye, aye,”—Rockhurst took up the sound, as he walked on,—“the storm keeps brewing, and our old wounds keep aching.”

The veteran looked after him:—

“God save your honour!”

III
THE PHIAL OF ACQUETTA

The bunches of wax candles were lit in the parlour reserved for the King’s intimate gatherings. Across the outside vision of lowering sky and of black water, spangled with tossing lights, citron-yellow curtains were drawn.

The new Venetian chandelier sparkled with delicate opalescent tints as it hung over the supper table: there were pink roses and green leaves, amber flowers and blue, most wondrously wrought in glass upon its twisted branches. The cluster of goblets on the buffet, shot with gold, had the glow of jewels. Two cups stood out from the rest: each had a fantastic sea-horse with dragon tail for its base, supporting on its grotesque head—gaping-jawed with red-curved tongue—a bowl as fine and as miraculously coloured as a bubble. This delicate, magic array of colour and sheen was reflected in a great mirror which filled the panel of the wall behind the table.

This last of the Venice gifts was of severer art than the rest; and where it did not hold the bubble splendour repeated in its depths, it shone coldly, crystal and silver, from the dark wainscot.

Charles was momentarily lifted out of his heavy mood by amusement and curiosity.

“Marry!” he said, “if these be our cousin of France’s leavings, what must be the treasure he has kept! Look up, my lord, this mirror—’tis a curious and pretty piece, and reflects the light a hundred times more gaily than our silver and bronze. And the drinking gear yonder…! The Apocalypse itself in glass!”

He strode to the side-table and laid a finger against the fair cheek of one of the goblets—then he glanced up and caught sight of his own dark visage in the new mirror. The gleam of satisfaction instantly vanished from the long and melancholy countenance.

“And gad, my lord,” he cried, “if you think I shall be left as much as this little tass, within a week! Oh—there’ll be one whose face will look vastly better than mine in yonder mirror; and another whose tiring-room can never be bright again without such a toy as yon!”

He turned and snapped his fingers impatiently toward the soft-footed servants who came and went between the door and the sideboard with viands and flasks.

“Away with them, away with them! We’ll sit together as in old times—eh, my merry Rockhurst?—and keep but Little Satan there to fill a cup.”

“I oft waited on you, alone, in Holland and elsewhere, sire,” responded the Lord Constable’s deep voice.

“Aye, aye,” said the King, in the same half-testy, half good-humoured manner. “But we have a demon handy to-night. Tush, man,” proceeded he, flinging himself into the leathern chair and shaking out the Flemish napkin, “things are better with us, and things are worse with us; let us drink and remember—and drink and forget! Ha, my lord, we oft had neither pasty nor capon in those days—but I’ll say that for thee, Harry, you were master cellarer, and you never let me lack decent wine—”

“My liege,” said Rockhurst, a note of tenderness creeping in through his grave tones, “we had to pledge a great cause, and the wine had to be worthy of the cup!”

“Truly,” said Charles. “I mind me of a certain yellow Rhenish: it had a smack—where you got it I never knew, Harry, but it had a smack!—The cause, say you? Plague on your hypocritical gravity…! Tush, man, we drank to black eyes and blue, to trim ankles and laughing tongues. Those were the days of that jade Lucy … ha, the pair of eyes! And what shall we pledge to-night?”

“Why, then, the old days, your Majesty.”

“Aye—the old days, good days … and all the better, being past! None can say I am an ambitious sovereign—eh, my solemn Constable? I ask no more of my people than that they should never send me on my travels again.… ’Tis modest, patriarchal—a home-keeping sovereign! No one can accuse me of not spending my substance among my subjects!”

“Indeed and indeed, no, sire!” said Rockhurst, without the slightest twinkle in his straight look. “As for spending, my liege, your Majesty has indeed a royal mastery of the art.”

“Go to!” said the King. “Wet that too dry humour of thine with a draught.—Nay, Little Satan, none of your dark-liveried claret to-night; we’ll have the merry yellow wine in yonder long flagon. Away with this dull glass, too.—Go, play with the Apocalypse. Those dragon beakers, I’ll swear they’ll hold half the flagon apiece.—And you shall have a brimmer and drink it to the last drop, my Lord Constable, for if I’m never to have you a merry dog again, by the Lord, I’ll have you a drunk one!—Vidame, I say you shall see my reverend Lord Constable drunk, and have something to laugh at to your dying day—for ’tis then the solemnest villain that ever staggered on human legs.”

Enguerrand had been a presence in the room as noiseless as a spirit. Yet every word that passed between the two men—the sovereign and his old comrade—had added intensity to his murderous passion. The boy loved the King. Unhappy, abnormal creature! He could neither love nor hate in reason, was as much racked with jealousy of his master’s regard as a lover of his mistress’s favour. Every look of old familiar friendship that Charles flung at Lord Rockhurst, every easy word, proclaiming a sympathy and confidence that placed them almost on brotherly equality, was as a lash on the raw wound of his pride—a spur to his leaping hatred.

At the King’s command he filled one of the dragon beakers from the long-necked bottle with a singular precision, though his hand was cold as ice, and his pulse beat to suffocation in his throat. He set the wonderful glass—more wonderful than ever now, with the golden liquid shining within its flanks—beside the King’s plate.

“Odd’s fish—a truly royal cup! As I live, the fair half of the bottle!… Now, boy, the other half to my Lord Constable.”

Over by the sideboard, under the cold gleam of the mirror, the King’s page paused a second, and his hand went a last time to his breast. Out, little phial! It lay in the hollow of his palm, no larger than a lady’s thimble. Break, silken thread! His moment had come: the lover would kiss his dark mistress on the lips! There was buzzing as of a thousand angry bees in his ears.… He never noted how still the room had grown. Now his hand hovered over the rim of the full beaker—a strange gesture, as of the priest blessing the cup…!

“Little Satan.…” said the King.

Though neither loud nor sharp, there was something so singular in Charles’s voice that Rockhurst started from his wonted abstraction.

As for Enguerrand, he was struck full into his heart. Involuntarily he straightened his hand and the empty phial fell lightly on the carpet. He remained a moment staring into nothingness; then slowly raised his eyes, and met the King’s eyes in the Venetian mirror.

Charles’s face in the glass … his glance was terrible! Terrible, too, was his voice as he spoke again, though it was lower than usual, and very distinct, very quiet:—

“Bring me that cup, Little Satan.”

And as the boy mechanically lifted the dragon goblet and turned round, holding it in both hands, for it was brimming, Charles leaned across the table and passed the twin cup, his own, toward Rockhurst, who sat in wonder.

“The King should have the fuller draught,” he said. “Why do you wait there, Little Satan?—Bring me that cup, that I may pledge my noble friend the Lord Constable.”

With this Enguerrand heard his doom. Had the King ordered him to torture and death he could not have punished him so mortally as by this quiet order.

A second more he stood, with fascinated eyes, staring at his beloved master: there was not the faintest answer in Charles’s relentless gaze. Then a dreadful smile broke on the young face. Without a word Enguerrand de Joncelles lifted the beaker to his own lips and drank.

It was a long draught, and every gulp was an effort to the constricted throat. Yet there was no interruption; and for a seemingly endless span of silence and tension the boy stood and drew the death into himself—his eyes, over the lovely, fragile rim, fixed in agony upon the King.

Charles made no sign, but waited.

When the last drop was drained, Enguerrand unclasped his fingers on either side. The dragon glass fell and was shivered.

Here Rockhurst leaped to his feet.

“Good God, your Majesty!” he exclaimed. “What is this?”

“Sit down again,” said the King, coldly. “The Vidame de Joncelles has voluntarily assumed to-night a new service about our person. It is a service which hath fallen into desuetude at the Court of England. And the young gentleman has proved a greedy taster and a clumsy one.—I am still waiting for my wine.”

Rockhurst’s gaze went in deep uneasiness from Charles’s face, set in lines of unwonted severity, to the livid countenance of the boy, who leaned back against the sideboard, scarce able to support himself.

“Your pardon, sire,” he began, pushing back his own cup—“the matter can scarce remain.…”

But his sovereign again interrupted him, this time with the royal peremptoriness which admits of no discussion:—

“There is but one thing we will not pardon, and it is that you add to our tedium: we commanded your presence here to-night that you might share it, not to increase it. But, meanwhile we are waiting,—Monsieur de Joncelles,”—and for the first time he raised his voice sharply,—“we are waiting.”

The boy passed his hand across his forehead and dashed back the curls that were already growing damp. That the King should have no pity on him, and yet spare him thus—it was befitting one whom he had worshipped from the very first for his true royalty. A kind of fierce pride awoke in him and spurred him to meet his death in a manner worthy of such clement cruelty. Though the lights were beginning to swim before his eyes and he rather groped than saw, he contrived to open a second flask and fill another of the Venetian beakers.

Then—for French Joan had been faithful, and swift was the working of her gift—he had to make a heroic effort to bring the glass to the King. But the very fierceness of the effort, final flare of an indomitable spirit, carried the failing body through.

Enguerrand came to the table with measured step, although it seemed to him he trod illimitable air; went down slowly on one knee and uplifted his rigid hands, clasping the substance he no longer felt. The ultimate action of his life was the yielding of the cup into the King’s hand.

As the King took and drank, the boy fell.

“Why, the lad has swooned…! some aqua vitÆ!” exclaimed Rockhurst.

But Charles flung out his hand with his rare gesture of command:—

“Nay, my lord.—He is dead, or dying. Little Satans do not do their work by halves. He is dead or soon will be.—Odd’s fish!” added the King, after a moment’s frowning meditation, “when you lured that linnet, his sister, to sing for you in the Tower, Harry, you little thought her song was to have such an echo!”

Rockhurst stared for a moment horror-stricken—his glance roamed from the broken beaker to the cups on the table and thence to Enguerrand’s convulsed face. A glimmering of the truth began to dawn upon him; the mystery was dissolving before a tragic and dreadful light. Even in the midst of the King’s words he dropped on one knee to raise the prone figure. The livid head fell limply back over his arm. The King cast one look down and averted his eyes.

“Away with him!” he cried, in an explosion of nervous irritability. “Away with him! Call whomsoever you want to carry him, do what you list, get what physician you wish,—the lad’s dead, and ’tis the end of it! You understand, I’ll not hear another word about the matter.… Gadzooks! what a finish to a tedious day! Away with him, I command you, my Lord Rockhurst!”

Rockhurst, who had half risen at the King’s sharp tones, now bent once more down and gathered the inert form into his arms.

“Will your Majesty, then, open the door for me?” he said, in a low voice.

The King sprang up from his chair, dashing his napkin on one side, and flung open the door with an angry hand.

The slam of its closing echoed down the great corridors. So would Charles ever shut the unpleasant episode out from his life. Yet he had not quite succeeded: as he went moodily back to the table, his foot struck against the empty little phial. With precaution, placing the napkin between it and his palm, he held it to the light. It was wrought of Italian glass, with twisted lines of blue and red, not much larger than a filbert nut.

A vision swam before his eyes: Rockhurst’s face, upturned as he had but just now seen that of his French page; and, like it, livid in the hues of death.

“Little Satan! …” he said aloud.

It was the last time that the words were ever to cross his lips. He cast the phial out through the open window and heard the faint splintering crash echo from the flags below.

Rockhurst had taken but a few steps down the passage, when some inexplicable impression bade him pause and glance down at his sad burden.

The light from one of the wall sconces fell full on the boy’s face: a subtle change, that was scarcely so much a quiver as a composing of all the features, was passing over it, driving away the terrible pinched look of agony and restoring something of its youthful beauty. Then Enguerrand opened his eyes and stared up into the Lord Constable’s countenance. Rockhurst had never before met those eyes but that he had found hatred in them. At this supreme moment there was no hatred, only a kind of desolate wonder. Then, even as their gaze met, the soul that seemed to seek his was gone; the eyes wondered no more.

Rockhurst stood still, an intolerable pain at his heart. It was almost as if he held his own son’s dead body on his breast. The ring of the yeoman’s halbert, the tramp of his heavy foot, roused him from the revery. He strode forward a few steps more.

“Ho, Ashby,” he called, “I have need of thee!”

“Nay, in God’s mercy,” cried the old man, drawing near, “that is never the French lad!”

He laid the halbert against the wall, and hastened to relieve his captain from the burden. Then, as he felt one of the small hands, cold and limp:—

“Dead, and dead in very surety! Why, ’tis not an hour since he passed me, singing like a swallow on the wing, and hopping for all like a squirrel.”

Very serious was the face of the King’s physician, and pale his cheek, as he lifted himself suddenly from the examination of the corpse that had been laid on my Lord Constable’s bed, in the room by the gateway.

He turned hastily and, forgetting all decorum, pushed not only the yeoman, who was awaiting his orders, but my lord himself, from the chamber.

“We can do nothing—the boy is dead!”

Then he leaned over and breathed rather than spoke into Rockhurst’s ear the single word, “Plague.” Adding aloud, the while fumbling in his pocket for his pomander box:—

“One of those monstrous, sudden cases we are told of—but which I confess I have never seen! Merciful heavens … in Whitehall! Your lordship must submit instantly to fumigation. Aye, and yonder yeoman, too, who carried the body.” This between prolonged sniffs at the pierced lid of his pomander box. “Pray, my lord, inhale of this, deep—and you, too, fellow, after his lordship! And the burial must be early in the morn—poor lad! And, my lord, I beseech let it be in secret. Oh, we must hold our tongues about this, my Lord Constable! The sickness in Whitehall, and in his Majesty’s very apartment!… Not a word to his Majesty! The lad has died of a fit—a rush to the head. Tut, tut—the truth must be kept secret indeed!”

Rockhurst had listened with immovable countenance.

“Aye,” he said gravely, “it shall be kept secret.”

And, after inhaling the pomander box with due solemnity, he handed it to yeoman Ashby. But as soon as the physician, taking a hurried congÉ, had left the anteroom, he laid his hand on the old soldier’s shoulder:—

“Never fear, man, neither you nor I shall catch the sickness whereof this poor youth died, you can take your captain’s word for warrant. Nevertheless, I charge thee, speak no word, but, as the physician hath it—a rush to the head!”

Yet rumour ran abroad, as rumour will. And Sir Paul Farrant, hearing of his whilom friend’s tragic death, had never a doubt that it was in those haunts of Alsatia that he had first met the distemper—and himself started off to the pure airs of Farrant Chace, where he spent a dismal month watching for symptoms.

Over the grave, in Tothill Fields, where the passionate, revengeful heart lay now in quietude, a stone was erected by the Lord Constable’s order, which set forth the Vidame de Joncelle’s names and titles, and recorded he had died in the flower of his age, honoured by the King’s regard.

LADY CHILLINGBURGH’S LAST CARD-PARTY