Buckingham stared an instant, then leaned nearer to obtain a closer view, and he caught his breath in sudden surprise.
“How came you by that jewel?” he asked, his eyes scanning the soldier’s face as he spoke.
And out of his abiding sense of injury the Colonel answered him:
“It was given me after Worcester as a keepsake by an empty fribble whose life I thought worth saving.”
Oddly enough there was no answering resentment from his grace. Perhaps his wonder overwhelmed and stilled at the moment every other emotion.
“So! It was you!” His eyes continued to search that lean countenance. “Aye!” he added after a moment, and it sounded like a sigh. “The man had just such a nose and was of your inches. But in no other respect do you look like the Cromwellian who befriended me that night. You had no ringlets then. Your hair was cropped to a godly length, and.... But you’re the man. How odd to meet you again thus! How passing odd!” His grace seemed suddenly bemused. “They cannot err!” he muttered, continuing to regard the Colonel from under knitted brows, and his eyes were almost the eyes of a visionary. “I have been expecting you,” he said, and again he used that cryptic phrase: “They cannot err.”
It was Holles’s turn to be surprised, and out of his surprise he spoke: “Your grace has been expecting me?”
“These many years. It was foretold me that we should meet again—aye, and that for a time our lives should run intertwined in their courses.”
“Foretold?” ejaculated Holles. Instantly he bethought him of the superstitions which had made him cling to that jewel through every stress of fortune. “How foretold? By whom?” he asked.
The question seemed to arouse the Duke from the brooding into which he had fallen.