William coughed. His cloak was fur-lined, but he constantly shivered; the shade, even of a September day, was hateful to him. "Come into the sun," he said, and turned out of the alley into the clear-lit garden. They walked slowly towards the sundial and the carp basin, M. D’Avaux prodding the hard gravel with his cane and the Prince with his switch under his arm. "Well, your business," said William calmly. "Monseigneur," replied M. D’Avaux, with sincerity and some earnestness, "I think that you are embarked on a dangerous enterprise." "The French say so," answered the Prince. "I have been told of the most extraordinary reports in your gazettes and pamphlets." "I do not obtain my information from gazettes and pamphlets, Your Highness," answered the Ambassador firmly, "but from more reliable sources." William paused by the carp pond and the bed of violet daisies. "What is your information?" he asked. "The last which Your Highness would wish in the hands of France." "You seem to think, Monsieur," said William, with the shadow of a smile, "that I am an enemy of His Majesty." He was not looking at the Frenchman, but down at the bed of daisies that he stirred gently with his whip as he spoke. M. D’Avaux looked sharply at his haughty aquiline profile, and answered with a quickening of the breath— "His Majesty cannot forget what you said at your table a year ago, Monseigneur. You said, Your Highness, when you heard that His Majesty had seized and dismantled Orange on the claim of the House of Longueville, that you would teach him what it was to insult a Prince of Orange, and you refused to retract or explain the words." "His Majesty," replied William, "hath neither retracted nor explained the deed." "Your Highness has often repeated those words." The Prince lifted his brilliant eyes. "I shall repeat them again, Monsieur," he said, in his strained low voice, "and again until I obtain satisfaction." He saw that M. D’Avaux had made the allusion to humiliate him, and though there was no sign of it in his countenance the shaft had told, for the insulting seizure of his personal princely apanage, for which he had been powerless to avenge himself, had been the hardest to bear of all the insolences of France, and the revenues had been a real loss. "You see," bowed M. D’Avaux, "that we have some reason to believe Your Highness the enemy of France." The Prince continued to look at him steadily. "His Christian Majesty is very interested in my affairs," he said. "It is the affairs of King James," returned the Frenchman, with some grandeur, "that my master is interested in——" "How doth that touch the States?" "It toucheth Your Highness, for we believe that you make preparations to lead an armament against His Britannic Majesty." William lowered his eyes almost disdainfully. "I perceive," he said, "that you do get your information from the gazettes after all——"