“You, monsieur, speak like a enemy of me,” said William calmly. “You think it is my pleasure to shed blood—you are of those who write that when I was outside Bruxelles I burn alive my wounded soldiers, and that I poisone’ my Uncle Charles—I ’ave read these things in your leaflets.” Jerome flushed. “I have had no hand in those,” he answered. “I find my cause too good an one to need lies to support it. I deny that you are King of England, your Highness,—I am not blind to your qualities.” “Yet, Mr. Caryl, you speak to me of being revenge’—which is a thing for men like Milor’ Mordaunt. This is not, Mon Dieu, the firs’ plot I ’ave discover’ since I was child. I ’ave learn’ to take insult and betrayal.” He rose and came into the room, the paper in his hand. “The nobles, I know,” he said. “An’ they serve me so they stay—if I send to the Tower all who write to St. Germains—who ’ave I left? And I will spare them my forgiveness.” “And we pay for your clemency, sir,” replied Jerome Caryl bitterly. “We humbler plotters.” William turned and looked at him. They were standing very near each other. The King took his hat off and flung it down on the chair beside him. “Mr. Caryl,” he said, “you are _gentilhomme_—cannot you see that I will not do something? I will not ’unt down these bourgeois—what are they? I will not know their name’.” He held the papers out to the Jacobite. “I am tire’ of your plot,” he finished. “Put that in the fire and let me ’ear no more of it.” Jerome Caryl stared at him, utterly bewildered and confused; the sense of what this meant rushed over him, making him giddy. “Put these in the fire,” repeated the King. “I ’ave no more time.” The Jacobite took the papers; with a great rush of crimson to his face, he thought of Delia and the hundreds to whom this would mean salvation. “Your Highness is magnanimous,” he said unsteadily. “Your generosity disarms me.” “You ’ave mistake’ me,” answered William coldly. “Wherefore did you think I would wish to be revenge’? Sir John think to serve me with this an’ I am indebt’ to ’im that he preserve peace, but I do not stoop, Mr. Caryl, to revenge.” He went back to his seat at the bureau; there was a pause, a silence, then Jerome Caryl put the papers into the fire; the great flare they made lit up the pale face of William of Orange and the beautiful flushed countenance of the Jacobite. Across the narrow bright room the eyes of the two men met, as if they measured each other; then the King dropped his glance to the letters before him. “You ’ave nothing more to say?” he asked coldly. “Then you may depar’.” “I shall not soon forget your Highness’ generosity,” said Jerome Caryl unsteadily, and the sincerity of his voice made amends for the conventional wording. “Call it my policy,” answered William with a slight lift of his green eyes. “And so, Mr. Caryl, you will be spare’ an obligation.”