"Then listen to me. 'Tis not the way of the world to do so until it is too late; in your case you may be willing. Do you know Marlborough?" "As the subaltern knows the general, not being known by him. But no more." "'Tis pity. Yet--yet if you could bring yourself before his notice; if--if--you could do something that should come under his eyes--some deed of daring----" "I must be there to do it--not here. At St. James's or Whitehall I can do nought. The watch can do as much as I." "That's very true; you must be there. There! there! Let me see for it. Where are the charts?" and Lord Peterborough went towards a great table near the window, which was all littered with maps and plans that made the whole heterogeneous mass look more like a battlefield itself after a battle than aught else. "Bah!" his lordship went on, picking up first a plan and then a chart, and throwing them down again. "Catalonia, Madrid, Barcelona, Cadiz. No good! no good! Marlborough will not be there. The war may roll, must roll, towards Spain, yet 'tis not in Spain that he will be. But Holland--Brabant--Flanders. Ha!" he cried at the two latter names. "Brabant--Flanders. And--why did I not think of it?--she is there, and there's the chance, and--and, fool that I am! for the moment I had forgotten it." "_She!_ The chance! Brabant! Flanders!" Bevill Bracton repeated, the words stumbling over each other in his excitement. "She! Who? And what have I to do with women--with any woman? I, who wish to do all a man may do in the eyes of men?" "Sit down," Lord Peterborough said now, in a marvellously calm, a suddenly calm, voice. "Sit down. I had forgotten my manners when I failed to ask you to do so earlier." "Ah, cousin Mordaunt, no matter for the manners at such a moment as this. Alas! you set my blood on fire when you speak of where the war will be, of where it must be, and then--then--you pour a douche of chill cold water over me by talking of women--of a woman." "Do I so, indeed? Well, hearken unto me," and his lordship leant forward impressively and looked into the young man's eyes. "Hearken, I say. This woman of whom I speak may be the guiding star that shall light you along the path that leads to Marlborough, and all that he can do for you. This woman, who may, in very truth, be your own guiding star or----" "Or?" "She may lead to your undoing. Listen again." [Illustration: "'Learn to know what Sylvia Thorne is like.'" (_p_. 6).] CHAPTER II. Had there been any onlooker or any listener at that interview now taking place in the old house at Parson's Green, either the eyes of the one or the ears of the other could not have failed to be impressed by what they saw or heard. Above all, no observer could have failed to be impressed by the character of the elder man, Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough and Monmouth, who, although so outwardly calm, was in truth all fire within.