“My death!” shivered Monmouth. Lord Grey turned to face him; thin and harsh-featured as he was, he made the other’s beauty a thing of nothing. “Why?” he said commandingly. “You know that you must die–you know what will happen to-morrow and what you have to expect from James Stewart, and those honours that you have won in life will you not keep to grace your death?” “I cannot die,” answered Monmouth; he rose and began walking about in a quick passion of protesting anguish: “I will not die.” “That you cannot decide; the manner only is in your power,” said Lord Grey calmly, and I marvelled to think that he had been a coward in open field. “I am not the King’s son—” his Grace cried out at him, and fell across a chair sick with unavailing love of life. Lord Grey took up a candle and turned to the door, looking at him the while. “Will you give James Stewart this triumph?” he asked. This seemed the one thing to brace Monmouth, for those two had always hated each other strongly; James in the old days had feared my lord’s power, been jealous that he was the elder son of the elder son, and Monmouth seemed to remember that; yet a mean thought hurried on the heels of the manly reflection. “He would give me my life for this,” he said weakly. “My life for this secret—” “Good night,” said Lord Grey–a strange man–and left us. The Duke seemed not to know that he had gone or that I remained; after a little he went into the bedchamber, but not to sleep, and all night I heard him weeping … such sick and bitter womanish sobs all through that long watch I kept.… Colonel Sidney’s son! Who were they who did this–and they who kept silence? A curious commingling of motives, sordid and lovable, ambition, some little love, some touch of self-sacrifice.… I felt compassion for King Charles, who had had no deeper feeling in all his spoilt life than this affection for what was not his.… I put the wasting candles out and sat in the dark; I lifted the curtain and saw the sun rise over Sedgemoor. Six thousand men to fight against hopeless odds to-morrow for him they deemed a King, the blood of Bourbon and Stewart, the heir of Tudor and Plantagenet.… And in my ears was the thick sobbing of a mere Englishman of a stock that scarce boasted gentility, who could not face the end of his masquerade nor fit the robe of greatness he had assumed. * * * * *