“Not Chance. Destiny,” said his grace, with quiet conviction.
“Why, Destiny, if you prefer to call it so. This jewel now—it is very odd! I have clung to it through all these years, as I have said; I have clung to it through some odd shifts which the sale of it might have relieved: clung to it against the day when we should meet again, that it might serve as my credential.” He did not add that to him the oddest thing of all was that to-day, at the very moment of this meeting, he was on his way to sell the jewel, compelled to it at last by direst need.
The Duke was nodding, his face thoughtful. “Destiny, you see. It was preordained. The meeting was foretold. Did I not say so?”
And again Holles asked him, as he had asked before: “Foretold by whom?”
This time the Duke answered him.
“By whom? By the stars. They are the only true prophets, and their messages are plain to him who can read them. I suppose you never sought that lore?”
Holles stared at him a moment. Then he shook his head, and smiled in a manner to imply his contempt of charlatanry.
“I am a soldier, sir,” he said.
“Why, so am I—when the occasion serves. But that does not prevent me from being a reader of the heavens, a writer of verse, a law-giver in the north, a courtier here, and several other things besides. Man in his time plays many parts. Who plays one only may as well play none. To live, my friend, you must sip at many wells of life.”
He developed that thesis, discoursing easily, wittily, and with the indefinable charm he could command, a charm which was fastening upon our adventurer now even as it had fastened upon him years ago in that hour of their brief but fateful meeting.