It was my thought that it contained the picture of Lady Harriet, which we were to return to her if either lived to do it, and I was sorry for this lady who had been so faithful in her love.
From one to the other of us the Duke looked strangely; his face was flushed now and beautiful as in former days when he was the loved one of that great brilliance at Whitehall, yet still he had the seal of death on him, and, worse than that, the horrible fear of it writ in every line of his comely countenance.
“Please you, look here,” he said; he opened the locket and held it out in his palm.
“What is this?” he asked in a husk and torn voice.
It was the likeness of a man, very fairly done, who wore a uniform and cravat of the time of the death of King Charles I.
Lord Grey looked at it quickly.
“It is your Grace,” he said; then, seeing the dress–“No,” he added, and glanced swiftly at Monmouth–“who is it?”
“It is Colonel Sidney taken in his youth,” I said, for I had known the man well in Rotterdam when he was attached to the court of the late King Charles, then in exile there. And I gazed at the painting … it was a marvellous fair face.
While I looked my lord Duke had three letters out from the same secret corner of his book, and I saw that two were in the writing of Colonel Sidney and the third in a hand I did not know, the hand of an ill-educated woman.