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“Yes, I think we had better have the fellow hanged on the thirteenth,” said Ormskirk, as he leisurely affixed his signature. “The date seems eminently appropriate. Now the papers concerning the French treaty, if you please, Mr. Langton.”

The impassive-faced young man who sat opposite placed a despatch-box between them. “These were sent down from London only last night, sir. Mr. Morfit [Footnote: Perhaps the most adroit of all the many spies in Ormskirk’s employment. It was this same Morfit who in 1756 accompanied Damiens into France as far as Calais; and see page 16.] has been somewhat dilatory.”

“Eh, it scarcely matters. I looked them over in bed this morning and found them quite correct, Mr. Langton, quite–Why, heyday!” the Duke demanded, “what’s this? You have brought me the despatch-box from my dresser–not, as I distinctly told you, from the table by my bed. Nay, I have had quite enough of mistakes concerning despatch-boxes, Mr. Langton.”

Mr. Langton stammered that the error was natural. Two despatch-boxes were in appearances so similar–

“Never make excuses, Mr. Langton. ‘Qui s’excuse–‘ You can complete the proverb, I suppose. Bring me Morfit’s report this afternoon, then. Yes, that appears to be all. You may go now, Mr. Langton. No, you may leave that box, I think, since it is here. O man, man, a mistake isn’t high treason! Go away, Mr. Langton! you annoy me.”

Left alone, the Duke of Ormskirk sat for a while, tapping his fingers irresolutely against the open despatch-box. He frowned a little, for, with fair reason to believe Tom Langton his son, he found the boy too stolid, too unimaginative, to go far. It seemed to Ormskirk that none of his illegitimate children displayed any particular promise, and he sighed. Then he took a paper from the despatch-box, and began to read.

He sat, as one had said, upon the east terrace of Halvergate House. Behind him a tall yew-hedge shut off the sunlight from the table where he and Tom Langton had earlier completed divers businesses; in front of him a balustrade, ivy-covered, and set with flower-pots of stone, empty as yet, half screened the terraced gardens that sank to the artificial lake below.

The Duke could see only a vast expanse of sky and a stray bit of Halvergate printing the horizon with turrets, all sober gray save where the two big copper cupolas of the south fa�ade burned in the April sun; but by bending forward you glimpsed close-shaven lawns dotted with clipped trees and statues,–as though, he reflected, Glumdalclitch had left her toys scattered haphazard about a green blanket–and the white of the broad marble stairway descending to the sunlit lake, and, at times, the flash of a swan’s deliberate passage across the lake’s surface. All white and green and blue the vista was, and of a monastic tranquillity, save for the plashing of a fountain behind the yew-hedge and the grumblings of an occasional bee that lurched complainingly on some by-errand of the hive.

Presently his Grace of Ormskirk replaced the papers in the despatch-box, and, leaning forward, sighed. “Non sum qualis eram sub bonæ regno Cynaræ,” said his Grace of Ormskirk. He had a statesman-like partiality for the fag-end of an alcaic.

Then he lifted his head at the sound of a girl’s voice. Somewhere rearward to the hedge the girl idly sang–an old song of Thomas Heywood’s,–in a serene contralto, low-pitched and effortless, but very sweet. Smilingly the Duke beat time.

Sang the girl:

“Pack clouds away, and welcome, day!
With night we banish sorrow:
Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft,
To give my love good-morrow.
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I’ll borrow:
Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing,
To give my love good-morrow.”

And here the Duke chimed in with a sufficiently pleasing baritone:

“To give my love good-morrow,
Notes from them all I’ll borrow.”