ing moved off a space I slipped to the man's side, as
if to give him some directions about his game.

"Listen," I said, in a voice heard only by him; "take the dressing off
your hand, and I have you broken on the wheel. You understand? Now
play."

Assuring myself that he did understand, and that Maignan and La Trape
were at hand if he should attempt anything, I went back to my place,
and sitting down by De Vic began to watch that strange game; while
Mademoiselle's laughter and Madame de Lude's gibes floated across the
court, and mingled with the eager applause and more dexterous
criticisms of the courtiers. The light was beginning to sink, and for
this reason, perhaps, no one perceived the Spaniard's pallor; but De
Vic, after a rally or two, remarked that he was not playing his full
strength.

"Wise man!" he added.

"Yes," I said. "Who plays well against kings plays ill."

De Vic laughed. "How he sweats!" he said, "and he never turned a hair
when he played Colet. I suppose he is nervous."

"Probably," I said.

And so they chattered and laughed--chattered and laughed, seeing an
ordinary game between the King and a marker; while I, for whom the
court had grown sombre as a dungeon, saw a villain struggling in his
own toils, livid with the fear of death, and tortured by horrible
apprehensions. Use and habit were still so powerful with the man that
he played on mechanically with his hands, but his eyes every now and
then sought mine with the look of the trapped beast; and on these
occasions I could see his lips move in prayer or cursing. The sweat
poured down his face as he moved to and fro, and I, fancied that his
features were beginning to twitch. Presently--I have said that the
light was failing, so that it was not in my imagination only that the
court was sombre--the King held his ball. "My friend, your man is not
well," he said, turning to me.

"It is nothing, sire; the honour you do him makes him nervous," I
answered. "Play up, sirrah," I continued; "you make too good a
courtier."

Mademoiselle d'Entragues clapped her hands and laughed at the hit; and
I saw Diego glare at her with an indescribable look, in which hatred
and despair and a horror of reproach were so nicely mingled with
something as exceptional as his position, that the whole baffled words.
Doubtless the gibes and laughter he heard, the trifling that went on
round him, the very game in which he was engaged, and from which he
dared