“So! It was you!” His eyes continued to search that lean countenance. “Aye!” he added after a moment, and it sounded like a sigh. “The man had just such a nose and was of your inches. But in no other respect do you look like the Cromwellian who befriended me that night. You had no ringlets then. Your hair was cropped to a godly length, and.... But you’re the man. How odd to meet you again thus! How passing odd!” His grace seemed suddenly bemused. “They cannot err!” he muttered, continuing to regard the Colonel from under knitted brows, and his eyes were almost the eyes of a visionary. “I have been expecting you,” he said, and again he used that cryptic phrase: “They cannot err.” It was Holles’s turn to be surprised, and out of his surprise he spoke: “Your grace has been expecting me?” “These many years. It was foretold me that we should meet again--aye, and that for a time our lives should run intertwined in their courses.” “Foretold?” ejaculated Holles. Instantly he bethought him of the superstitions which had made him cling to that jewel through every stress of fortune. “How foretold? By whom?” he asked. The question seemed to arouse the Duke from the brooding into which he had fallen. “Sir,” he said, “we cannot stand talking here. And we have not met thus, after all these years, to part again without more.” His manner resumed its normal arrogance. “If you have business, sir, it must wait upon my pleasure. Come!” He took the Colonel by the arm, whilst over his shoulder he addressed his waiting lackeys in French, commanding two of them to follow. Holles, unresisting, curious, bewildered, a man walking in a dream, suffered himself to be led whither the other pleased, as a man lets himself drift upon the bosom of the stream of Destiny. CHAPTER XIII BUCKINGHAM’S GRATITUDE