The Duke of Ormskirk, then (one gleans from Löwe's pages), dismissed from mind the Audaine conspiracy. It was a pity to miss the salutary effect of a few political executions just then, but after all there was nothing to be done about it. So the Duke turned to the one consolation offered by the affair, and set out for Halvergate House, the home of Marian Heleigh's father. There one finds him, six days later, deep in a consultation with his secretary, which in consideration of the unseasonable warmth was held upon the east terrace.
 
"Yes, I think we had better have the fellow hanged on the thirteenth," said
Ormskirk, as he leisurely affixed his signature. "The date seems eminently
appropriate. Now the papers concerning the French treaty, if you please,
Mr. Langton."
 
The impassive-faced young man who sat opposite placed a despatch-box between them. "These were sent down from London only last night, sir. Mr. Morfit [Footnote: Perhaps the most adroit of all the many spies in Ormskirk's employment. It was this same Morfit who in 1756 accompanied Damiens into France as far as Calais; and see page 16.] has been somewhat dilatory."
 
"Eh, it scarcely matters. I looked them over in bed this morning and found them quite correct, Mr. Langton, quite—Why, heyday!" the Duke demanded, "what's this? You have brought me the despatch-box from my dresser—not, as I distinctly told you, from the table by my bed. Nay, I have had quite enough of mistakes concerning despatch-boxes, Mr. Langton."
 
Mr. Langton stammered that the error was natural. Two despatch-boxes were in appearances so similar—
 
"Never make excuses, Mr. Langton. 'Qui s'excuse—' You can complete the proverb, I suppose. Bring me Morfit's report this afternoon, then. Yes, that appears to be all. You may go now, Mr. Langton. No, you may leave that box, I think, since it is here. O man, man, a mistake isn't high treason! Go away, Mr. Langton! you annoy me."
 
Left alone, the Duke of Ormskirk sat for a while, tapping his fingers irresolutely against the open despatch-box. He frowned a little, for, with fair reason to believe Tom Langton his son, he found the boy too stolid, too unimaginative, to go far. It seemed to Ormskirk that none of his illegitimate children displayed any particular promise, and he sighed. Then he took a paper from the despatch-box, and began to read.
 
He sat, as one had said, upon the east terrace of Halvergate House. Behind him a tall yew-hedge shut off the sunlight from the table where he and Tom Langton had earlier completed divers businesses; in front of him a balustrade, ivy-covered, and set with flower-pots of stone, empty as yet, half screened the terraced gardens that sank to the artificial lake below.
 
The Duke could see only a vast expanse of sky and a stray bit of Halvergate printing the horizon with turrets, all sober gray save where the two big copper cupolas of the south façade burned in the April sun; but by bending forward you glimpsed close-shaven lawns dotted with clipped trees and statues,—as though, he reflected, Glumdalclitch had left her toys scattered haphazard about a green blanket—and the white of the broad marble stairway descending to the sunlit lake, and, at times, the flash of a swan's deliberate passage across the lake's surface. All white and green and blue the vista was, and of a monastic tranquillity, save for the plashing of a fountain behind the yew-hedge and the grumblings of an occasional bee that lurched complainingly on some by-errand of the hive.
 
Presently his Grace of Ormskirk replaced the papers in the despatch-box, and, leaning forward, sighed. "Non sum qualis eram sub bonæ regno Cynaræ," said his Grace of Ormskirk. He had a statesman-like partiality for the fag-end of an alcaic.
 
Then he lifted his head at the sound of a girl's voice. Somewhere rearward to the hedge the girl idly sang—an old song of Thomas Heywood's,—in a serene contralto, low-pitched and effortless, but very sweet. Smilingly the Duke beat time.
 
Sang the girl:
 
  "Pack clouds away, and welcome, day!
  With night we banish sorrow:
  Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft,
  To give my love good-morrow.
  Wings from the wind to please her mind,
  Notes from the lark I'll borrow:
  Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing,
  To give my love good-morrow."
 
And here the Duke chimed in with a sufficiently pleasing baritone:
 
  "To give my love good-morrow,
  Notes from them all I'll borrow."
 
"O heavens!" spoke the possessor of the contralto, "I would have thought you were far too busy sending people to gaol and arranging their execution, and so on, to have any time for music. I am going for a walk in the forest, Jack." Considering for a moment, she added, "You may come, too, if you like."
 
But the concession was made so half-heartedly that in the instant the Duke of Ormskirk raised a dissenting hand. "I would not annoy you for an emperor's ransom. Go in peace, my child."
 
Lady Marian Heleigh stood at an opening in the yew-hedge and regarded him for a lengthy interval in silence. Slender, men called her, and women "a bean pole." There was about her a great deal of the child and something of the wood-nymph. She had abundant hair, the color of a dead oak-leaf, and her skin was clear, with a brown tinge. Her eyes puzzled you by being neither brown nor green consistently; no sooner had you convicted them of verdancy than they shifted to the hue of polished maple, and vice versa; but they were too large for her face, which narrowed rather abruptly beneath a broad, low forehead, and they flavored her aspect with the shrewd innocence of a kitten. She was by ordinary grave; but, animated, her countenance quickened with somewhat the glow of a brown diamond; then her generous eyes flashed and filmed like waters moving under starlight, then you knew she was beautiful. All in all, you saw in Marian a woman designed to be petted, a Columbine rather than a Cleopatra; her lures would never shake the stability of a kingdom, but would inevitably gut its toy-shops; and her departure left you meditative less of high enterprises than of buying something for her.
 
Now Marian considered her betrothed, and seemed to come at last to a conclusion that skirted platitude. "Jack, two people can be fond of each other without wanting to be together all the time. And I really am fond of you, Jack."
 
"I would be a fool if I questioned the first statement," rejoined the Duke; "and if I questioned the second, very miserable. Nevertheless, you go in pursuit of strange gods, and I decline to follow."
 
Her eyebrows interrogated him.
 
"You are going," the Duke continued, "in pursuit of gods beside whom I esteem Zidonian Ashtoreth, and Chemosh, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites, to be commendable objects of worship. You will pardon my pedantic display of learning, for my feelings are strong. You are going to sit in the woods. You will probably sit under a youngish tree, and its branches will sway almost to the ground and make a green, sun-steeped tent about you, as though you sat at the heart of an emerald. You will hear the kindly wood-gods go steathily about the forest, and you will know that they are watching you, but you will never see them. From behind every tree-bole they will watch you; you feel it, but you never, never quite see them. Presently the sweet, warm odors of the place and its perpetual whispering............