His Grace of Marlborough, returning to England after Malplaquet, himself worn with the fierce strain of war, tossed on the changing waves of public feeling, one hour the people’s idol the next doubted and reproached, was in such mood as made him keen of perception and of feeling.

“Years mark changes in a man, my lord Duke,” he said when first they talked alone, “even before they line his face or pale his bloom of health.  Since we met you have seen some hours you had not seen when I beheld you last.  And yet”—­with ironic bitterness—­“you are not battling with intrigues of Court and State, with the ingratitude of a nation and the malice of ladies of the royal bedchamber.  ’Tis only the man who has won England’s greatest victories for her who must contend with such things as these.”

“Mrs. Masham has no enmity against me,” said Osmonde.  “I have no power she would take from me.”

“And no wife she would displace about the throne,” his Grace added.  “The world waits to behold your Duchess still?”

“’Tis I who wait,” said Osmonde, gravely.

There was a pause, and while it lasted, Marlborough gazed at him with a thought dawning in his eye.

“You have seen her,” he said at last, in a low voice.

Osmonde remained silent.  A moment before he had risen, and so stood.  The man who regarded him experienced at the moment a singular thing, feeling that it was singular, and vaguely asking himself why.  It was a sudden new realisation of his physical perfection.  His tall, great body was so complete in grace and strength, each line and muscle of it so fine a thing.  In the workings of such a physical being there could be no flaw.  There was such beauty in his countenance, such strength and faithful sweetness in his firm, full mouth, such pure, strong passion in the deeps of his large, kind, human eye.  The handsomest and the tallest man in England he might be, but he was something more—­a complete noble human thing, to whom it surely seemed that nature should be kind, since he had so honoured and done reverence to the gifts she had bestowed upon him.  ’Twas this his illustrious companion saw and was moved by.

“You have seen her,” he said, “but—­since you wear that look which I can read—­something has come between.  Had you two bared hearts to each other for but one hour, as ’twas ordained you should, you would stand before me so happy a man that none could pass you by and not turn to behold again the glow of the flame of joy burning within your soul.”

My Lord Duke of Osmonde drew a long, deep breath as he listened, looking down upon the ground.

“Yes,” he said, “’twould have been so.”

But he spoke no further on the subject, nor did his Grace of Marlborough, for suddenly there came to him a certain memory—­which was that he had heard that the beautiful wild creature who had set Gloucestershire on fire had made a great marriage, her bridegroom being the Earl of Dunstanwolde, who was the Duke of Osmonde’s kinsman.  And it was she he himself had felt was born to mate with this man, and had spoke of it in Flanders, finding my lord Duke had seen her at a distance but had not encountered her in any company.  And at last it seemed that they had met, but not until she had given herself to another.