"I greet you well, Sir Jocelyn," said Charles, in the kindest and most gracious tone, as the young knight advanced towards him. "As your disgrace was public, so shall your restoration to the King's favour be likewise public. Your return to Court will be a satisfaction to his Majesty. Any imprudence of which you have been guilty will be entirely overlooked. All graver faults imputed to you have been explained--so that no unfavourable impressions against you remain upon my royal father's mind--or on mine. Let me assure you that you have now no more zealous friends than the Conde de Gondomar and the Marquis of Buckingham." "For any wrong I may have done Sir Jocelyn I am heartily sorry," said Buckingham, frankly. "And he may rely on my present oiler of friendship." "And on mine, too," subjoined De Gondomar. "The services I have rendered him must be set against any mischief I have subsequently done." "You make me more than amends," said Sir Jocelyn, bowing to them, "and I at once accept your proffered friendship." "You are in the midst of friends and foes, Sir Jocelyn," said Prince Charles, "and have before you a new-found relative; and not far distant from you one, whom--unless I am greatly mistaken--has the strongest hold upon your affections; but before you turn to her, or to any one, listen to the sentence, which in the King's name I shall pronounce upon those two offenders--a sentence which most assuredly will be ratified by his Majesty in person, and by the Lords of the Council of the Star-Chamber, before whom they will be brought. Hear me, then, ye wrong-doers. Ye shall be despoiled of your unjustly-acquired possessions, which will be escheated to the Crown. Where restitution is possible, it shall be made." "Restitution by the Crown!--a likely thing!" muttered Sir Giles. "Moreover, ye shall pay for your misdeeds in person," pursued Charles. "Degraded from the knighthood ye have dishonoured, and with all the ceremonies of debasement, when ye have become Giles Mompesson and Francis Mitchell, knaves, ye shall undergo precisely the same ignominious punishment, with all its dreadful details, which ye caused to be inflicted upon him you supposed to be Clement Lanyere. This being done to you, and no part of the torture being on any plea omitted, ye shall be brought back to the Fleet Prison, and be there incarcerated for the residue of your lives." Mompesson heard this sentence apparently unmoved, though his flashing eye betrayed, in some degree, his secret emotion. Not so his partner. Flinging himself on his knees before the Prince, he cried in piteous tones--"I confess my manifold offences, and own that my sentence is lenient in comparison with them. But I beseech your Highness to spare me the mutilation and branding. All else I will patiently endure." "He merits no compassion," said Buckingham, "and yet I would intercede for him."