w her ladyship, hitherto so
yielding, with true feminine contrariness set herself to resist him. A
scuffle ensued between them. She broke from him at last, and sped swift
as a doe across the lawn towards the lights of the great house, his
Grace in pursuit between vexation and amusement.

But he did not overtake her, and it was with a sense of having been
fooled that he rejoined his guests. His questing eyes could discern her
nowhere. Presently he made inquiries, to be told that she had desired
her carriage to be called, and had left York House immediately upon
coming in from the garden.

He concluded that she was gone off in a pet. It was very odd. It was, in
fact, most flagrantly contradictory that she should have taken offense
at that which she had so obviously invited. But then she always had been
a perverse and provoking jade. With that reflection he put her from his
mind.

But anon, when his guests had departed, and the lights in the great
house were extinguished, Buckingham thought of the incident again.
Cogitating it, he sat in his room, his fingers combing his fine,
pointed, auburn beard. At last, with a shrug and a half-laugh, he rose
to undress for bed. And then a cry escaped him, and brought in his valet
from an adjoining room. The riband of diamond studs was gone.

Reckless and indifferent as he was, a sense of evil took him in the
moment of his discovery of that loss, so that he stood there pale,
staring, and moist of brow. It was no ordinary theft. There were upon
his person a dozen ornaments of greater value, any one of which could
have been more easily detached. This was the work of some French agent.
He had made no secret of whence those studs had come to him.

There his thoughts checked on a sudden. As in a flash of revelation, he
saw the meaning of Lady Carlisle's oddly contradictory behaviour. The
jade had fooled him. It was she who had stolen the riband. He sat down
again, his head in his hands, and swiftly, link by link, he pieced
together a complete chain.

Almost as swiftly he decided upon the course of action which he must
adopt so as to protect the Queen of France's honour. He was virtually
the ruler of England, master in these islands of an almost boundless
power. That power he would exert to the full this very night to thwart
those enemies of his own and of the Queen's, who worked so subtly in
concert. Many would be wronged, much harm would be done, the liberties
of some thousands of f