Again Beauvallet bowed, and knew that he was creating a good impression. Privately he thought: "Our sovereign keeps men of better blood than this about her, God wot!" He was very quick to nose out the parvenu. The secretary bowed in his turn, and held out his hand. "I will deliver them to his Majesty, señor." At that Beauvallet raised his black brows delicately. Maybe he thought it more in the part, maybe it was the audacity of the man, or a mere curiosity to see this far-famed Philip, but he said gently: "My orders, señor, are to deliver these letters into his Majesty's own hands." The secretary bowed again. "All goes very well," thought Beauvallet, watching him like a lynx, in spite of his careless demeanour. "Follow me, señor, if you please," said the secretary, and led the way up the stairs to a long gallery above. Down a labyrinth of corridors they seemed to walk, until they came to a curtained doorway. Beauvallet went through into a severely furnished chamber, and was left there to wait again. More martyrdoms hung on the walls. Sir Nicholas grimaced at them, and deplored his Catholic Majesty's taste. Another half-hour passed; King Philip was in no hurry, it seemed. Sir Nicholas looked out of the window on to a paved court, and yawned from time to time. Back came the secretary at last. "His Majesty will receive you, señor," he said, and gave back the Chevalier's credentials into his keeping. "This way, if you please." He held back the curtain for Beauvallet to pass out, and led him across the corridor to double doors. These opened at his scratch upon the solid panels; Sir Nicholas found himself in an ante-chamber where two men sat writing at a table, and two guards stood beside the doors. He followed the secretary across the room to a curtained archway; the curtain was swung back by a guard there, and the secretary went through. "The Chevalier de Guise, sire," he said, bowing very low, and drew back a little against the wall. Sir Nicholas came coolly in, paused a moment as the curtain fell back into place behind him, and in one swift glance noted the contents of this bare, cell-like apartment. There was little enough to note. A chest, an escritoire, a priest by the window, a table in the middle of the room, and behind it, seated in a high-backed chair with arms, with his foot upon a velvet stool, a pallid man with sparse yellow locks, flecked with grey; and a yellow beard, scant as his meagre thatch; and hooded eyes, sombre and vulturine under the puckered lids. Sir Nicholas sank gracefully down on to his knee; the plumes in his hat swept the ground before him. "God's my life!" was his irrepressible thought. "The two of us in one small room, and he does not know it!" "The Chevalier de Guise," repeated Philip in a slow, harsh voice. "We bid you welcome, señor."