Grey looked at him, turning over in his mind, I think, the aspects of this bewildering turn; he gazed at Colonel Sidney’s son with a curiosity almost cruel.
I was thinking of the obscurity from which he had sprung, the mystery round his early years in Rotterdam, his sudden appearance in a blaze of glory at Whitehall when the King had made him Duke.…
“Who did this?” I asked. “And who kept silence?”
“King Charles loved me as his son,” he answered vaguely, “and I loved him.… I could not have told him–and I was ambitious. What would you have done?” he cried. “I did not know until I was fourteen.” He pressed his hand to his breast.
“But I will not die for it,” he muttered. “Why should I die for it?”
“Your death must become your life, not your birth,” said Lord Grey.
“My death!” shivered Monmouth.
Lord Grey turned to face him; thin and harsh-featured as he was, he made the other’s beauty a thing of nothing.
“Why?” he said commandingly. “You know that you must die–you know what will happen to-morrow and what you have to expect from James Stewart, and those honours that you have won in life will you not keep to grace your death?”
“I cannot die,” answered Monmouth; he rose and began walking about in a quick passion of protesting anguish: “I will not die.”