William touched his hat and the Ambassador bowed. The Prince’s sharp glance detected that he was something out of countenance. "I wonder, M. D’Avaux, what you can have to say to me." "Yet Your Highness is well able to guess," de Avaux answered, with the air of a compliment. William looked at him again; he detested all Frenchmen, and since the day when, a grave child of eleven and a state prisoner, he had sat sternly in his coach in the Voorhout, and refused to yield precedence to M. D’Èstrees, he had especially hated the French envoys to the States, who had always been, in the truest sense, his enemies; the only thing that softened him to M. D’Avaux was that diplomat’s cleverness. The Prince, who loved a worthy antagonist, admired him for his real wit and skill in the long and bitter game that had been played between them; nevertheless, there was, in the full bright glance he cast on him, a quality that his antagonist did not mistake. "I fear," added the Ambassador, "that I do not find Your Highness very well disposed towards me." "This is matter of business, is it not, Monsieur?" answered the Prince. "When you have opened your subject I will discover my disposition to it." They were walking up and down the long walk; the thick gold sunshine slipped through the ilex branches and flickered on the Frenchman’s black satins and the Prince’s heavy fur-edged cloak. M. D’Avaux held his hat in his hand, but the Prince still wore his brown beaver. "I am very sorry," said the Frenchman, in his quiet, pleasant manner, but with obvious indication of the concern he was under, "that I have had so few opportunities of assuring you in what esteem my master holdeth Your Highness——" William made no reply. "These are no idle words," continued M. D’Avaux, fingering the black curls of his peruke on his breast. "Despite all unfortunate differences, His Majesty hath, as all Europe, a great admiration for the courage, wisdom, and address of Your Highness——" "Is it not rather late for these compliments, M. D’Avaux?" "There is an object in them, Monseigneur," answered the Ambassador; "for in consequence of the feeling of His Majesty to Your Highness I am speaking to you now instead of to the States." "Ah," said William. He switched at the box hedge with his short riding-whip. "Do you not, Monsieur, consider myself and the States as one?" "History, Monseigneur, showeth that the House of Orange and the United Provinces have not always been of the same sentiments and design." "They are so, however, now, Monsieur," answered the Prince dryly; "and whatever your business, you may put it before myself or the States, whichever you choose." M. D’Avaux bit his lip; he read in William’s curt words a reminder that he was absolute with the States and more confident than ever of his power over them; he was nettled into a colder tone. "Yet I think that Your Highness would rather hear me than let me take my message to Their High Mightinesses."