navy, to
fight against the revolutionaries from without, he would be beyond
criticism if, as the Duc de Bercy, he also fought against them from
within.

Indeed, it was with this plain statement of the facts that the second
military officer of the duchy had some days before been sent to the
Court of St. James to secure its intervention for Philip's freedom by
exchange of prisoners. This officer was also charged with securing the
consent of the English King for Philip's acceptance of succession in the
duchy, while retaining his position in the English navy. The envoy had
been instructed by the Duke to offer his sympathy with England in the
war and his secret adherence to the Royalist cause, to become open so
soon as the succession through Philip was secured.

To Philip's mind all that side of the case was in his favour, and sorted
well with his principles of professional honour. His mind was not so
acutely occupied with his private honour. To tell the Duke now of his
marriage would be to load the dice against himself: he felt that the
opportunity for speaking of it had passed.

He seated himself at a table and took from his pocket a letter of
Guida's written many weeks before, in which she had said firmly that she
had not announced the marriage, and would not; that he must do it,
and he alone; that the letter written to her grandfather had not been
received by him, and that no one in Jersey knew their secret.

In reading this letter again a wave of feeling rushed over him. He
realised the force and strength of her nature: every word had a clear,
sharp straightforwardness and the ring of truth.

A crisis was near, and he must prepare to meet it.

The Duke had said that he must marry; a woman had already been chosen
for him, and he was to meet her to-morrow. But, as he said to himself,
that meant nothing. To meet a woman was not of necessity to marry her.

Marry--he could feel his flesh creeping! It gave him an ugly, startled
sensation. It was like some imp of Satan to drop into his ear the
suggestion that princes, ere this, had been known to have two wives--one
of them unofficial. He could have struck himself in the face for the
iniquity of the suggestion; he flushed from the indecency of it; but
so have sinners ever flushed as they set forth on the garish road to
Avernus. Yet--yet somehow he must carry on the farce of being single
until the adoption and the succession had been formally arranged.

Vexed with these