"We shall see as to that," he replied impatiently. "What did this man come here for if not to get his price?"
"Methinks he came on behalf of his policy," said Lord Digby doubtfully. "Maybe he would have the credit of reconciling Your Majesty with the Parliament, and after the peace some great place in the army or at your Council board."
"These high ambitions may be useful to us," replied Charles, with a bitter accent, "and therefore we will encourage them. Meanwhile, our hopes lie across the border or across the sea—not in the rebel camp."
He was then silent a little while and seemed, as had become usual with him, to have suddenly sunk into a meditation or reverie: he would so do now in the midst of a conversation, the midst of a sentence even, as if his mind wandered suddenly from the present to the past, from the objects near to objects far away.
His face looked as if a veil had been dropped over it, so completely absent was his gaze, so utterly did an expression of melancholy hide and disguise all other.
Lord Digby stood watching him with bitter regret, with indignant sorrow, and as he gazed at this face which humiliation and anguish had distorted and altered as a terrible disease will distort and alter, as he noticed the grey locks, the thin, marred profile, the careless dress, a horrible conviction pressed on his heart with the certainty of a revelation: the King was ruined, broken, cast down; never would he be set up again, and these schemes and plots were mere baseless delusions. This conviction was as fleeting as it was strong, yet for one moment the faithful gentleman had seen his master as a thing utterly lost, and he turned his head away swiftly, for he loved the man as well as the King.
Charles turned from the window, his thin fingers still pressed to his face.
"Go and see if any letters have come," he said.
Lord Digby did not say that immediately a courier came he was brought to the King, and therefore there could be no letters without his instant knowledge, but turned sadly to go on his errand; he knew the King was waiting always for letters from Henriette Marie in France—imperious, passionate letters when they came, which he kissed every line of and sprinkled with the scalding tears of pride and love and regret.
As soon as Lord Digby had gone Charles drew from his doublet a gold chain, from which hung two diamond seals and a miniature in a case ornamented with whole pearls.