Albemarle was checkmated. He sat there grim and impassive as if he were carved of stone. But his mind was a seething cauldron of anger. It was always thus. The places of trust, the positions demanding experienced heads and able hands that England might be served to the best advantage by her most meritorious sons, were constantly being flung away upon the worthless parasites that flocked about Charles’s lecherous Court. And he was the more angered here, because his hands were tied against resistance by the very identity of the man he was appointing. Had it been a question of any other man of Holles’s soldierly merit, but of such antecedents as would permit the disclosure of his name, he would clap on his hat and step across to the palace to argue the matter with the King. And he would know how to conduct the argument so as to prevail against the place-seeking insolence of Buckingham. But, as it was, he was forced to realize that he could do none of this without perhaps dooming Holles and bringing heavy censure fruitlessly upon himself. “Oddsfish!” the King would cry. “Do you tell me to my face that you prefer the son of a regicide to the friend of my friend?” And what should he answer then? He lowered his eyes. The commission which was the subject of this discussion lay there on the table before him, the space which the name of Randal Holles was intended to occupy still standing blank. He was defeated, and he had best, for the sake of Holles as much as for his own, accept the situation without further argument. He took up a pen, dipped it, and drew the document to him. “Since you have His Majesty’s authority, there can be, of course, no further question.” Rapidly, his quill scratching and spluttering across the sheet, he filled in the name of Sir Harry Stanhope, bitterly considering that he might as profitably have filled in Nell Gwynn’s. He dusted the thick writing with pounce, and proffered it without another word. But his looks were heavy. Buckingham rose, smiling, and Sir Harry bounced up with him, smiling also. For the first and last time in the course of that short interview Sir Harry spoke. “Your grace’s devoted servant,” he professed himself, bowing and smirking. “I shall study to discharge my office creditably, and to allay any qualms my youth may leave in your grace’s mind.” “And youth,” said Buckingham, smiling, to reassure Albemarle, “is a fault that time invariably corrects.” Albemarle rose slowly to his feet, and the others bowed themselves out of his presence. Then he sat down again heavily, took his head in his hands, and softly loosed an oath. Holles came an hour later, radiant with expectation, a gay, youthful-looking, commanding figure in his splendid red coat, to be crushed by the news that proved him Fortune’s fool again, as ever.