"A little, still a little, Simon? Be consoled! The King invited me, but he hasn't come to see me. There lies my business. Why hasn't he come to see me? I hear certain things, but my eyes, though they are counted good if not large, can't pierce the walls of the Castle yonder, and my poor feet aren't fit to pass its threshold." "You needn't grieve for that," said I sullenly. "Yet some things I know. As that a French lady is there. Of what appearance is she, Simon?" "She is very pretty, so far as I've looked at her." "Ah, and you've a discriminating glance, haven't you? Will she stay long?" "They say Madame will be here for ten or fourteen days yet." "And the French lady goes when Madame goes?" "I don't know as to that." "Why, nor I neither." She paused an instant. "You don't love Lord Carford?" Her question came abruptly and unlooked for. "I don't know your meaning." What concern had Carford with the French lady? "I think you are in the way to learn it. Love makes men quick, doesn't it? Yes, since you ask (your eyes asked), why, I'll confess that I'm a little sorry that you fall in love again. But that by the way. Simon, neither do I love this French lady." Had it not been for that morning's mood of mine, she would have won on me again, and all my resolutions gone for naught. But she, not knowing the working of my mind, took no pains to hide or to soften what repelled me in her. I had seen it before, and yet loved; to her it would seem strange that because a man saw, he should not love. I found myself sorry for her, with a new and pitiful grief, but passion did not rise in me. And concerning my pity I held my tongue; she would have only wonder and mockery for it. But I think she was vexed to see me so unmoved; it irks a woman to lose a man, however little she may have prized him when he was her own. Nor do I mean to say that we are different from their sex in that; it is, I take it, nature in woman and man alike. "At least we're friends, Simon," she said with a laugh. "And at least we're Protestants." She laughed again. I looked up with a questioning glance. "And at least we both hate the French," she continued. "It's true; I have no love for them. What then? What can we do?" She looked round cautiously, and, coming a little nearer to me, whispered: "Late last night I had a visitor, one who doesn't love me greatly. What does that matter? We row now in the same boat. I speak of the Duke of Buckingham." "He is reconciled to my Lord Arlington by Madame's good offices," said I. For so the story ran in the Castle. "Why, yes, he's reconciled to Arlington as the dog to the cat when their master is by. Now there's a thing that the Duke suspects; and there's another thing that he knows. He suspects that this treaty touches more than war with the Dutch; though that I hate, for war swallows the King's money like a well." "Some passes the mouth of the well, if report speaks true," I observed.