ough the light and shadow
of the night, wherein he would lend a helping hand to France and secure
gold and power for his pains. He had no qualms of conscience; for must
not his estates be kept, his dignity maintained? His purpose was clear.
He would bring Portsmouth and the King closer together: and what England
lost, he would gain--and, therefore, England; for was not he himself a
part of England, and a great part?

Then too he must and would have Nell.

CHAPTER VI

Softly on tiptoe;
Here Nell doth lie.

As often happens in life, when one suitor departs, another suitor
knocks; and so it happened on this glorious night. The belated suitor
was none other than Charles, the Stuart King. He seemed in the moonlight
the picture of royalty, of romance, of dignity, of carelessness, of
indifference--the royal vagabond of wit, of humour and of love. A
well-thumbed "Hudibras" bulged from his pocket. He was alone, save for
some pretty spaniels that played about him. He heeded them not. His
thoughts were of Nell.

"Methought I heard voices tuned to love," he mused, as he glanced about.
"What knave has spied out the secret of her bower? Ho, Rosamond, my
Rosamond! Why came I here again to-night? What is there in this girl,
this Nell? And yet her eyes, how like the pretty maid's who passed me
the cup that day at the cottage where we rested. Have I lived really to
love--I, Solomon's rival in the entertainment of the fair,--to have my
heart-strings torn by this roguish player?"

His reflections were broken in upon by the hunters' song in the
distance. The music was so in harmony with the night that the forest
seemed enchanted.

"Hush; music!" he exclaimed, softly, as he lent himself reluctantly to
the spell, which pervaded everything as in a fairyland. "Odds, moonlight
was once for me as well the light for revels, bacchanals and frolics;
yet now I linger another evening by Nell's terrace, mooning like a lover
o'er the memory of her eyes and entranced by the hunters' song."

[Illustration: THE KING PROFESSES HIS LOVE FOR NELL.]
The singers were approaching. The King stepped quickly beneath the
trellis, in an angle of the wall, and waited. Their song grew richer, as
melodious as the night, but it struck a discord in his soul. He was
thinking of a pair of eyes.

"Cease those discordant jangles," he exclaimed impatiently to himself;
"cease, I say! No song except for Nell! Nell! Pour f