He passed so close to Brion that the young man could have touched him. He shrank back rather, as from something noisome and unclean, and with such a repellant frown on his face as it was fortunate, perhaps, the great man failed to observe. But he was in close converse with the Queen, and was as inattentive to the rabble about him as though they had been sheep. But the moment the little party was well gone by, Brion felt his arm gripped by Clerivault. He looked, and saw the paragon’s face a sickly yellow, while his eyes were alight with panic. ‘God’s ’slid!’ said he, in a hoarse whisper: ‘Why did you do that--look like that? Come away, ere some flying rumour chance to reach his ear!’ ‘Let it,’ answered Brion fiercely. ‘I budge for no man’s humour.’ ‘Budge, budge!’ cried the other, in a sweat of despair. ‘The rack will make you budge a foot’s length ere you know it. Wist you not his name? Come for my sake, if not your own.’ That argument prevailed, and the boy allowed himself to be led away. ‘Clerivault,’ he said presently, in a stiff strait voice, when they were come into a quiet place; ‘you asked me but now if I knew him. I knew and know him, Clerivault.’ He stopped, looking full into the other’s face, and said not another word. But there had been that of significance in his tone which was unmistakable. Clerivault dropped his eyes before that revelation of understanding. ‘Well,’ he muttered lamely: ‘if you know him, you know what is better avoided. Once a bad man is always a bad man--that is a legal dictum. You will gain most by remembering it, and forgetting all the rest.’ But Brion, though he uttered no word further on the subject, did not forget. The shadow of that encounter darkened all the sunny days which had gone before, and made ominous even the delirious prospect which had lured him from his far retreat. Henceforth he could never feel himself secure from the chance of a meeting, to which accident, or his own hot young blood, might give a sinister turn. CHAPTER XX. MISTRESS JOAN MEDLEY ‘Lucidus ordo!’ cried Raleigh. ‘I drink to the happy sequel!’