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any superfluity of flesh, he yet had grown noticeably thin these three weeks, and the healthy pallor of his face had been replaced by feverish tints as of one wasted by haunting, unsatisfied fires.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?”