My lord Duke moved forward.  He had heard this talk often before during the past weeks, and he had seen this man haunting her presence, and always when he was near or spoke to her a strange look on her face, a look as if she made some struggle with herself or him—­and strangest of all, though she was so gracious to himself, something in her eyes had seemed to hold him back from speaking, as if she said, “Not yet—­not yet!  Soon—­but not yet!” and though he had not understood, it had bewildered him, and brought back a memory of the day she had sate in the carven gilded chair and delivered her lord’s message to him, and her eyes had pleadingly forbade him to come to Dunstan’s Wolde while her words expressed her husband’s hospitable desire.  His passion for her was so great and deep, ’twas a fathomless pool whose depths were stirred by every breath of her, and so he had even waited till her eyes should say—­“Now!”

He had moved towards her this moment, because she had looked up at him, as if she needed he should come nearer.  She rose from her seat, leaving Sir John Oxon where he stood.  His Grace moved quicker and they met in the crowd, and as she looked up at him, he saw that she had lost a little of her radiant bloom, and she spoke in a low voice like a girl.

“Will your Grace take me to my coach?” she said.  “I am not well.”

And he led her, leaning on his arm, through the crowd to Mistress Anne, who was always glad to leave any assembly—­the more brilliant they, the readier she to desert their throngs—­and he escorted them to their coach, and before he left them asked a question gravely.

“Will your ladyship permit me,” he said, “to wait on you to-morrow?  I would know that your indisposition has passed.”

My lady answered him in a low voice from the coach; her colour had come back, and she gave him her hand which he kissed.  Then the equipage rolled away and he entered his own, and being driven back to Osmonde House said to himself gravely, over and over again, one word—­“To-morrow!”

But within two hours a messenger in the royal liveries came from Kensington and as quickly as horses could carry him my lord Duke was with her Majesty, whom he found agitated and pale, important news from France having but just reached her.  Immediate action was necessary, and there was none who could so well bear her private messages to the French Court as could the man who had no interest of his own to serve, whom Nature and experience peculiarly fitted for the direction of affairs requiring discretion, swiftness of perception, self-control, and dignity of bearing.  ’Twas his royal Mistress herself who said these things to his Grace, and added to her gracious commands many condescending words and proofs of confidence, which he received with courtly obeisance but with a galled and burning heart.

And on the coming of the morrow he was on his way to Versailles, and my Lady Dunstanwolde, having received news of the sudden exigency and his departure, sate in her chamber alone gazing as into vacancy, with a hunted look in her wide eyes.