“Yes, yes,” exclaimed the King brusquely, “I know your anxiety in that quarter. A man ever thinks that task the most important with which he intimately deals, but my position gives me a view over the whole realm, and the various matters of State assume their just proportions in my eyes; their due relations to each other. Ireland is well enough, but it is the heart and not the limbs of the empire that requires the physicians’ care. Parliament has opened badly, and is like to give trouble unless treated with a firm hand.”
The hand of the Earl appeared anything but firm. It wavered as it sought the support of the chair’s arm.
“Have I your Majesty’s permission to be seated? I am not well,” Strafford said faintly.
“Surely, surely,” cried the King, himself taking a chair. “I am deeply grieved to see you so unwell; but a journey to London is a small matter compared with a march upon Dublin, which is like to have killed you in your present condition.”
“Indeed, your Majesty, the smaller journey may well have the more fatal termination,” murmured the Earl; but the King paid no attention to the remark, for his wandering eye now caught sight of a third in the conference, which brought surprised displeasure to his brow. The girl was standing behind the high back of the chair in which she had been seated, in a gloomy angle where the firelight which played so plainly on the King and Strafford did not touch her.
“In God’s name, whom have we here? The flippant prophet of the forest, or my eyes deceive me! How comes this girl in my palace, so intimate with my Lord Strafford, who seemed to meet her as a stranger but yesterday?”
The slumbering suspicion of Charles was aroused, and he glanced from one to the other in haughty questioning.
“I never met her until I encountered her in the forest when I had the honour to accompany your Majesty. To-day, as I walked with De Courcy and others, there came a second accosting from her, as unexpected as the first. The girl craved private speech with me, which I somewhat reluctantly granted. The upshot is, she brings me proof, which I cannot deny, that she is my eldest daughter.”
“Your eldest daughter!” cried the King, amazed. “Is your family then so widely scattered, and so far unknown to you, that such a claimant may spring up at any moment?”
“I was married privately to the daughter of Sir John Warburton. Circumstances separated me from my wife, and although her father curtly informed me of her death he said nothing of issue. There was a feud between us,—entirely on his part,—I had naught against him. It seems he has been dead this year past, and my daughter, getting news of her father among Sir John’s papers, comes thus southward to make inquiry.”