The Duke could not hide a start. "Lord Middleton, sir?" he faltered.
The King smiled coldly. "The letter," he said, "was from him, I suppose?"
My lord rallied himself. "No, sir, it was not," he answered, with a flash of spirit. "It purported to be from him."
"Yet you went--wherever you went--thinking to see him?" his Majesty continued, smiling rather disagreeably.
"I did," my lord answered, his tone betraying his agitation. "But to do nothing to the prejudice of your service, sir, and what I could to further your interests--short of giving him up. He is my relative."
"And for years," my lord cried warmly, "was my intimate friend."
The King shrugged his shoulders again. "We have fought that out before," he said, with a sigh of weariness. "And more than once. For the rest in that connection and whatever others may say, Lord Shrewsbury has no ground to complain of me."
"I have cause, sir, to do far otherwise!" the Duke answered in a tone suddenly changed and so full of emotion that it was not difficult to discern that he had forgotten my presence; which was not wonderful, as I stood behind him in the shadow of the doorway, whither out of modesty I had retreated. "God knows I remember it!" he continued. "Were it not for that, if I were not bound to your Majesty by more than common ties of gratitude, I should not be to-day in a service which--for which I am unfit! The daily duties of which, performed by other men with indifference or appetite, fill me with pity and distaste! the risks attending which--I speak without ceremony, sir--make me play the coward with myself a hundred times a day!"
"Cæsar," the King said quietly, "lets none but Cæsar call him coward."
Kindly as the words were uttered, and in a tone differing much from that which the King had hitherto used, the Duke took no heed of them. "Others wish for my place; God knows I wish they had it!" he cried, his agitation growing rather than decreasing. "Every hour, sir, I pray to be quit of the faction and perjury in which I live! Every hour I loathe more deeply the work I have to do and the people with whom I have to do it. I never go to my office but my gorge rises; nor leave it but I see the end. And yet I must stay in it! I must stay in it! I tell you, sir," he continued impetuously, "on the day that you burned those letters you but freed me from one slavery to fling me into another!"