“See how the world wags,” resumed the favourite then; “you, Sir Paul, seek the dens yonder,”—he pointed to the sinister purlieus they had just left behind,—“because of a friend—I, because of an enemy.” Farrant pricked his ears under his silken, fair curls. It was the first time he had been admitted even so far into the Vidame’s confidence. This Enguerrand, a French boy who in a few months’ time had stepped, it seemed, without the slightest effort into the inner circle of Court favour, upon the outer rim of which the indefatigable Sir Paul had scarce a footing, was an enigma to his associates. He had a handsome sister; but his success depended not on her, for had she not denied the King for the sake of the King’s friend, Lord Rockhurst? It was an open secret in Whitehall. Enough to have damned the chances of any other man, it would seem! Yet here was the lad, with his white, handsome, secret face; with his silent, insolent, easy ways; with his deep moods, his sudden rages, as close to his Majesty, as audacious and as secure of his position as young Monmouth himself. Farrant had witnessed his first introduction—he knew that there was no secret tie, no mystery save in the new page’s own personality. Sir Paul, the failure, would have given all he possessed for the talisman. Yet the talisman was no such occult thing, but an unfailing talent to amuse that most melancholy man, whom the world liked to call the Merry Monarch. “An enemy, say you, my good Enguerrand?” cried the young baronet, lifting his foolish eyebrows a trifle higher than nature had set them. He had the curiosity of trivial natures and was all agog. “Aye, _perdi_,” responded the other, briefly. The wind was ruffling his dark head, blowing the heavy curls off the forehead; making patent at once the extreme youth and the prematurely worn countenance. “And you are then a-practising against a rencounter.… O, Master Enguerrand, I pray you that I be your second!” “Why, you shall so, then.” The words dropped from the other’s lips in careless condescension. Enguerrand’s eyes were lost in space. Across the river, between the merry, white, flying clouds and the green fields of Surrey, he saw Heaven knows what bloody vision of triumph. “And he—the man, the enemy?” asked Sir Paul, after a while. “Him whom I shall kill … with that little escaping thrust of our Laperrière … yes, it shall be that … the great man? Yet none so great, Sir Paul, but that he must himself defend his honour … and none so old but that he be as much man as I—even as I am none so young but that I am as much man as he.…” At which cryptic utterance he folded his delicate lips on silence.