“Your Majesty mistakes. No memory; but a warning!”
The King looked puzzled; then, with his usual distaste for prolonged discussion, made a gesture as if he would put the matter on one side.
“But that locket?” And with the words Madame de Mantes flung out a small olive finger. Since English etiquette, it seemed, permitted every one to speak, then she would speak. The matter had become all at once of palpitating interest to her. The portrait in the locket—it was evidently a portrait—he had smiled at it. And such a smile! She took a vow that one day this man should be made to smile thus on her.
“True, true,” said Charles. “Let us see into the secret at last, my merry Rockhurst.”
The Lord Constable flung himself back into his chair.
“Nay, sire,” said he, and the deference of the words became mockery in view of the attitude of the speaker. “Your Majesty has every jurisdiction over me—my goods, my services, my life, are irrevocably yours to dispose of; but my thoughts are mine own. And this locket belongs to my most secret thoughts.”
Curiosity flickered once more for a moment in the royal eye. But through drooping lids the Lord Constable’s gaze was steel-like, and the King shrugged his shoulders with the foreign gesture that cleaved to him through life.
“God’s mercy, my lieges, that ye keep your thoughts to yourselves, at least!” he cried, with an assumed rueful air; “for, between your lost goods and your past services, our exchequer has enough to meet.” He stretched out his hand for the guitar as he spoke, and twanged ignorantly at the strings.
Enguerrand rose with a grin. Charles’s ingratitude toward his ruined loyalists was no secret in France, and the cold gibe was after his heart.
“Then we shall not see the locket?” cried the Frenchwoman, disappointment ringing through her fluted tones.