Chapter 8 - Page 2

lackey a royalty so
important--and with such repose of natural dignity that 'twas he who
seemed majestic, and not the man he waited on. Since then all goes with
comparative smoothness. If a Queen's favoured counsellor and greatest
general so serves him, the little potentate feels his importance
properly valued."

"But if one who knows his Lordship had looked straight in his eyes,"
said Roxholm, "he could have seen the irony within them--held like a
spark of light. I have seen it."

When my Lord Marlborough went to the Hague to take command of the Dutch
and English forces, and to draw the German power within the
confederacy, he took with him more than one young officer notable for
his rank and brilliant place in the world, it having become at this
period the fashion to go to the wars in the hope that a young
Marlborough might lurk beneath any smart brocade and pair of fine
shoulders. Among others, his Lordship was attended on his triumphal way
by the already much remarked young Marquess of Roxholm, and it was
realized that this fortunate young man went not quite as others did,
but as one on whom the chief had fixed his attention, and for whom he
had a liking.

In truth, he had marked in him certain powers and qualities, which were
both agreeable to his tastes and promised usefulness. He had not
employed his own powers and charms, physical and mental, from his
fifteenth year upward, without having learned the actual weight and
measure of their potency, as a man knows the weight and size of a thing
he can put into scales and measure with a yardstick. He remembered well
hours, when the fact that he was of a beauteous shape and height, and
gazed at others with a superb appealing eye, had made that difference
which lies between failure and success; he had never forgot one of the
occasions upon which the power of keeping silence under provocation or
temptation, the ability to control each feature and compel it to calm
sweetness, had served him as well as a regiment of soldiers might have
served him. Each such experience he had retained mentally for future
reference. Roxholm possessed this power to restrain himself, and to
keep silent, reflecting, and judging meanwhile, and was taller than he,
of greater grace, and unconscious state of bearing; his beauty of
countenance had but increased as he grew to manhood.

"I was the handsomest lad at Court in the year '65," his Grace of
Marlborough said once (he had been made Duke by this time). "The year
you were born I was the handsomest man in the army, they used to
say--but I was no such beauty and giant as you, Marquess. The gods were
_en veine_ when they planned you."

"When I was younger,"