“Ah, what a history that was!” he exclaimed. “His mother trained him as if with a foreknowledge of that star-like ascendency. He was schooled to shine and dazzle, to excel all compeers in the graces men and women admire. I doubt she never thought of the mind inside him, or cared whether he had a heart or a lump of marble behind his waist-band. He was taught neither to think nor to pity—only to shine; to be quick with his tongue in half a dozen languages, with his sword after half a dozen modes of fence. He could kill his man in the French, or the Italian, or the Spanish manner. He was cosmopolitan in the knowledge of evil. He had every device that can make a man brilliant and dangerous. He mounted every rung of the ladder, leaping from step to step. He ascended, swift as a shooting star, from plain country gentleman to the level of princes. And he expired with an ejaculation, astonished to find himself mortal, slain in a moment by the thrust of a ten-penny knife. I remember as if it were yesterday how men looked and spoke when the news came to London, and how some said this murder would be the saving of King Charles. I know of one man at least who was glad.” “Who was he, sir?” asked Denzil. “He who had the greatest mind among Englishmen—Thomas Wentworth. Buckingham had held him at a distance from the King, and his strong passionate temper was seething with indignation at being kept aloof by that silken sybarite—an impotent General, a fatal counsellor. After the Favourite’s death there came a time of peace and plenty. The pestilence had passed, the war was over. Charles was happy with his Henriette and their lovely children. Wentworth was in Ireland. The Parliament House stood still and empty, doors shut, swallows building under the eaves. I look back, and those placid years melt into each other like one long summer. And then, again, as ’twere yesterday, I hear Hampden’s drums and fifes in the lanes, and see the rebels’ flag with that hateful legend, ‘Vestigia nulla retrorsum,’ and Buckinghamshire peasants are under arms, and the King and his people have begun to hate and fear each other.” “None foresaw that the war would last so long or end in murder, I doubt, sir,” said Angela. “Nay, child; we who were loyal thought to see that rabble withered by the breath of kingly nostrils. A word should have brought them to the dust.” “There might be so easy a victory, perhaps, sir, from a King who knew how to speak the right word at the right moment, how to comply graciously with a just demand, and how to be firm in a righteous denial,” replied Denzil; “but with Charles a stammering speech was but the outward expression of a wavering mind. He was a man who never listened to an appeal, but always yielded to a threat, were it only loud enough.”