“Although I have the King’s commission in my pocket and hold an important office in his service, I haven’t a shilling in the world,” he said. “Not a shilling.” Albemarle responded instantly by producing a purse from which he counted twenty pounds. There was no sign of parsimonious reluctance about his offer now. “As a loan, of course,” said Holles, gathering up the yellow coins. “No, no,” Albemarle corrected him. “An advance. Take no further thought for it. The Treasury shall refund me the money at once.” CHAPTER XXIX THE MIRACLE Away from Whitehall, where the ground was green with thriving grass, went Colonel Holles at speed. He set his face towards Islington once more, and swung along with great strides, carrying in his breast a heart more blithe than he had known for many a year. Blind and deaf to all about him, his mind sped ahead of his limbs to the goal for which he made. Thus, until a sudden awful dread assailed him. Fortune had fooled and cheated him so often that it was impossible he should long continue in this new-born trust in her favour. It was, after all, four weeks since he had seen Nancy, and those in that house of rest where he had spent the period of his sequestration could tell him nothing of her since they held no direct intercourse with those who had their being in the pest-houses. In a month much may betide. Evil might have befallen her, or she might have departed thence. To soothe the latter dread came the recollection that any such departure would have been impossible until she, too, had undergone the prescribed period of disinfection. But the former dread was not so easily to be allayed. It would be so entirely of a piece with all his history that, now that apparently he held the earnest of Fortune in his hands, he should make the discovery that this had reached him too late; that, even as she bestowed with the one hand, so with the other did Fortune rob him. You conceive, then, the dread anxiety in which he came, breathless, hot, and weary from the speed he had made, to the open fields and at last to the stout, spiked gates of that pleasant homestead that had been put to the uses of a lazaret. Here a stern and surly guardian denied him passage. “You cannot enter, sir. What do you seek?” “Happiness, my friend,” said the Colonel, completing the other’s conviction that he was mad. But mad or sane there was a masterful air about him now. He bristled with the old amiable arrogance that of late had been overlaid by despondency and lassitude of soul. And his demand that the gate should be unbarred for him held an authority that was not lightly to be denied. “You understand, sir,” the gatekeeper asked him, “that, once you enter here, you may not go back whence you come for twenty-eight days, at least?” “I understand,” said Holles, “and I come prepared to pay the price. So, in God’s name, open, friend.”