“I have had no hand in those,” he answered. “I find my cause too good an one to need lies to support it. I deny that you are King of England, your Highness,—I am not blind to your qualities.”
“Yet, Mr. Caryl, you speak to me of being revenge’—which is a thing for men like Milor’ Mordaunt. This is not, Mon Dieu, the firs’ plot I ’ave discover’ since I was child. I ’ave learn’ to take insult and betrayal.”
He rose and came into the room, the paper in his hand.
“The nobles, I know,” he said. “An’ they serve me so they stay—if I send to the Tower all who write to St. Germains—who ’ave I left? And I will spare them my forgiveness.”
“And we pay for your clemency, sir,” replied Jerome Caryl bitterly. “We humbler plotters.”
William turned and looked at him. They were standing very near each other. The King took his hat off and flung it down on the chair beside him.
“Mr. Caryl,” he said, “you are gentilhomme—cannot you see that I will not do something? I will not ’unt down these bourgeois—what are they? I will not know their name’.”
He held the papers out to the Jacobite.
“I am tire’ of your plot,” he finished. “Put that in the fire and let me ’ear no more of it.”
Jerome Caryl stared at him, utterly bewildered and confused; the sense of what this meant rushed over him, making him giddy.